OUTRAGE

Am I the only one who has noticed that ‘outrage’, ‘the politics of outrage’ and ‘the outraged class/ mobs’ have been everywhere in the newspapers and on the box lately? Hardly a day passes before you hear one of these three expressions enjoying its place in the 24 hour news cycle ‘sun’.

This onslaught of ‘outrage’-based phrases/ clauses/ exclamations etc. has made me wonder what kind of punters would use them. Besides the root word ‘first derivative’, they also appear to be linked to that most awful of categories….the NEGATIVE.

The people allegedly associated with outrage are the trendoids, the greenies, Trots, lefties, commies, public servants, hipsters (maybe), teachers and some nurses with brown hair.

When you consider both the users of this language AND the citizens they’re attempting to describe, a couple of things then come to mind-

1. A punter only references others with ‘outrage’ when he or she disagrees with their point of view.

2. The sub-classification of the species into the ‘outraged’ and the ‘non-outraged’ is really an attempt at campdrafting and that only belongs in the Royal Easter Show. Any sort of reasoned or intellectual quality in this process of dividing the good (i.e. the principled) and the bad (i.e. the ideologues) and erecting some sort of holding paddock for the latter is absent.

I’ve also considered a third revelation. Well, it’s a revelation to me. Any unit who alludes to ‘outrage’ is probably on the ‘negative’ end of the spectrum which is fitting…….and ironic.