How Long Can We Sustain Permanent Outrage Culture?
The world isn’t made of blood allies and nemeses
I’m a reporter by trade, so I’m used to strangers calling me an ignorant liar . What I will live and die and never, never understand, though, is why we get so much glee from attacking people we otherwise agree with. I know it happens a lot, but I want to tell a quick story and take it apart.
I have a Substack (please subscribe!) where I try and write something short every(ish) week and link to other stories I’ve written or podcasts or whatever. Last week I wrote this:
Increasingly I want to grab friends and shake them and tell them that I pretty intentionally don’t watch Rachel Maddow and certainly don’t want to hear a recap from them. This isn’t a dig at her in particular, but polemicists aren’t good for politics. Listening to them is a step below reading the headlines and feeling as if you’re informed.
It was part of (what I thought was) a larger point about whether politics should be for forcing people to do what you want or for finding a better way to live together. I…
