Rotating Outrage
Years ago when I lived in Oakland, California, a friend of mine played in a garage band called The Third Term. I don’t remember much about their music except that one of their songs was called “Rotating Outrage,” which my friend said had been inspired by a nebulous charge on his utility bill called “Rotating Outage.” I thought of that song recently when I realized that like a lot of people, I seemed to have spent the past five years in a constant state of outrage. Constant outrage is really not a way to live, unless of course you’re a New York Jets fan. Then it just comes with the territory.
The problem with constant outrage is that each of us only has so much outrage to give and let’s face it, there has been no shortage of things to be outraged about. Think about it. Imagine you were so outraged by something like family separation, or the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, or the very fact that Ted Cruz exists, that by the time the Big Lie about election fraud rolled around, you had no more outrage left to give (note: a slightly more successful band wrote an appropriate song for this called “Comfortably Numb”).
The Big Lie certainly deserves as much and probably more outrage than any of the deplorable transgressions of late. This is where the rotating outrage technique comes in. Rather than running out of outrage because you’ve used it all up on Josh Hawley’s raised first, you simply rotate that outrage, a little bit for Hawley, still plenty left for Lindsay Graham.
Rotating your outrage is simply a more efficient way to get the most out of your outrage without being overburdened by any one thing. This past week, we all had the opportunity to be outraged again by the events of January 6. That could have been overwhelming, perhaps leading to red faces, high blood pressure, and most importantly little to no outrage left for anything else. But not for me. Because I’ve adopted rotating outrage, I was still able be outraged when the Republican senators, who are supposed to be impartial jurors, met with the Florida man’s defense team, and also by Rand Paul’s seeming inability to put a fucking mask on, without any worry that I’d be out of outrage while listening to the Florida man’s defense team lie.
For convenience, advanced users of the rotating outrage technique can actually schedule their outrage. For instance, on my calendar, I planned to be outraged on Saturday when the insurrectionist-in-chief was about to be acquitted by spineless Republicans. I’d actually allowed a little extra outrage for that. Then when it briefly looked like the trial would be delayed in order to call witnesses, I quickly moved that outrage to Tuesday. Since I’m always rotating, I was ready to move something else into that slot, which was great because I’ve still got some Marjorie Taylor Greene outrage to get out. I’m actually thinking she might be on my outrage calendar for quite a while. School shooting denial and Jewish space lasers?
Once you get the hang of rotating your outrage, you’ll find that it’s a lot easier to squeeze in a little outrage for the jerk who takes up two parking spaces, or anyone who still pays by check in the grocery store, plus you’ll still have plenty of outrage left for literally everything that Mitch McConnell says and does. And when the senator from Kentucky sets a new record for assholery, like he did this past weekend, you can rotate some of that outrage away from a wannabe like Marco Rubio to make a little more room to be outraged at Mitch.
I hope you’ll give rotating outrage a try. Something tells me that even with the orange man exiled to the sunshine state where he is no doubt busy cheating at golf, binge watching Tucker Carlson, and guzzling diet cokes (in other words, same old, same old), we’re still in for a lot more outrage.
Meanwhile, when I have time I’ll try to remember some more Third Term songs in hopes of getting more life advice, but for now that will have to wait. I’ve got some Fox News outrage scheduled in a few minutes and after that, the bungled pandemic response from you know who. You see, there’s always plenty of outrage to go around.
