"I See Your Outrage, Sir, And Raise You MY Outrage!"

The bumper stickers are pretty common, especially around here: "If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention." The sentiment has a certain truth to it, but it only goes as deep as bumper-sticker truth can.

But that phrase has been on my mind lately, as I've been thinking a lot about outrage. But let me be clear: I haven't been outraged; I've just been thinking about it.

It seems that we have a surfeit of outrage around here lately. It used to be that there was an order to all of this anger stuff. You kind of started at irritation, moved to anger, and then get to outrage, if the situation warranted. But now outrage is the starting point, which makes me worry about where people go from there.

But what I find really amazing about the world of outrage we're in right now is how much of the outrage is directed at other people's outrage. We have people outraged at someone else's outrage at a third person's outrage. Call it outrage cubed. We've moved into a kind of meta-outrage state that will probably only grow as the election creeps closer.

Take a look at the recent outburst at the City Council meeting. A resident, who's been showing up regularly at City Council meetings to express his displeasure with the City government, goes a bit beyond the pale, and suddenly everyone is outraged. One group is outraged that this person acted the way he did. Another group understands his outrage and is outraged that the first group doesn't understand the outrage. The first group is then outraged that the second group condones being outraged.

It goes like this:

Person 1: I'm outraged.
Person 2: You can't be outraged. I'm outraged.
Person 1: I'm outraged that you don't acknowledge that I have a right to be outraged.
Person 2: I'm outraged that you're outraged at my outrage.

Yes, it does become that petty. People are focusing their outrage on lawn signs and emails and the proper place to sign up on the sign up sheet to address the City Council. Silly stuff, in the grand scheme of things.

I don't know, maybe I should be outraged. Perhaps it's true that I'm not paying attention. But I do know that when I try to pay attention, it's hard to get at the facts because all I see are people outraged at the outrageous behavior of other people.

In doing my usual extensive research for this piece, I came across this definition of outrage: Excess of boldness or pride; foolhardiness, rashness; presumption.

According to the OED, that definition is obsolete. My gut says it might be making a comeback, at least around here. Now if I could just figure out how to put it on a bumper sticker...