Where's the outrage?

I think I've just read this one time too many: Where's the outrage? Today it's Robert Scheer in The Huffington Post who wants to know, and I'm inclined to say, Right in front of your face, you fucking fool. During these damp years of The Current Occupant, as one fresh hell after another comes to light, a blogger or a columnist will rise up with his moldy question, Where's the outrage? Along with this unanswerable, I've also heard, Where are all the Vietnam protesters? as though we've been in deliberate hiding, unwilling to give up our fat-cat life-styles, or as though both fury and protest are in perilously short supply.

Lazy and apolitical as I am, I've managed to log in the hours writing various congresspeople, sending furious emails, perusing online info, working on anti-Occupant blogs, and marching. I can't begin to imagine what the activists are up to. And still I hear the bleat, Where's the outrage? I suppose these people are visualizing the massive protests of the sixties and, seeing no equivalent, imagine the American public happily accepting one ghastly revelation after another.

I'd like to point out that those impressive demonstrations against war and racism were years in the making. Organizers worked in the South during the 1940's and 1950's preparing the way for later overt actions in the 60's. The Vietnam conflict had gone on nearly ten years by the time there were mass protests. And while war resistors and civil rights activists got a lot of newspaper space, there was no popular consensus that these were good ideas. People were beaten and killed for asserting their First Amendment rights. The economy was better too. College students didn't have to work every spare second to knock down an enormous tuition payment, one bread-winner per family was still the rule, and the social network was intact. People had more time to gather in physical groups rather than virtual ones.

There's plenty of outrage around today. More than enough I'd say. The forms it takes are different than those forty years ago. Outrage is being spun through citizen journalism, blogging, and on-line community groups like The Daily Kos. Given the slack state of the economy, the necessity for two or even three jobs per person, it's pretty damned amazing what's sprung up in this short a span. It takes time, as I mentioned in my last blog, to absorb and then reject The Big Lie and The Worse Truth. It takes us time to find one another. It takes time to mobilize. It takes what it takes.

But the outrage has been there right along. You need humility to perceive it. And more humility to realize you're not the only right-minded guy in the universe.

Robert Scheer, I'm talking to you.