All right, let's get into audience questions for the week. First question today. Hey David,
will you please do the right thing?
Simply denounce outrage culture. So listen, the problem is not outrage. Anyone who's paying
attention to what is going on and what has been going on in society for the last 50 years,
at least economically, culturally, and in many other ways. Everything from gross inequality,
corporate control of all aspects of society, a government that is in many ways I'm not
held accountable for its actions. The military industrial complex, um, uh, the, the Sudanese
pseudo intellectual ism. And Anti Intellectual Ism. Like, Gee, if you've been paying attention,
you should actually be outraged. And that actually makes sense. But the problem is not
the outrage itself. In the same way that the problem with so-called Jo social justice warriors
is not social justice itself. And these words, these phrases have become dirty words in great
part because the right has really successfully focused in on slivers of movements and blown
them up to be the claim that they are representative.
Big Picture. But the real issue that I have with quote, outrage culture and some of these
other things, the social justice warrior movement and whatever is not the fact that they exist,
but how they are wielded. And I'll even go further and include identity politics in that
I've said before, identity politics in and of itself as a general concept is not the
problem. It's not the problem per se. Uh, the problem is that there is a version of
identity politics that has gone beyond simply recognizing that hey, someone's identity is
not only important to them, but one's identity does give them a unique perspective. Uh, in
terms of their view of the world and what they can bring to a conversation and we should
recognize that and listen to that. The problem is there are areas where identity politics
is wielded like a codral. I've talked about this before in the same way.
Outrage, outrage meaning like anger and disapproval of things. Outrage helps to change those things
if it is wielded appropriately and productively, that is what we want. If people weren't outraged
about injustices, they'd never change. The problem is when outrage culture leads to counterproductive
demagoguery fo activism, that's not actually going to lead to change, that the outraged
people claim to want. A cartoonish example is, you know the story I did years ago that
went viral on Youtube to protest racism. Some white people were blocked from going to classes
one day. That's a totally backwards application of outrage that we should have about different
forms of systemic racism that still exist in our society. That was not the right implementation
of the outrage into making productive change. In fact, it was completely counterproductive.
And then when it comes to media, people should be outraged when discussing the extremist
messages that are perpetuated.
But then sometimes people are equally outraged as I've spoken before. Uh, just because someone
has the audacity to have a different point of view that is destructive outrage culture.
Right. When I say, uh, as, as a progressive that I want the u s out of Venezuela and our
involvement in Latin America has been disastrous, but that Maduro and Chavez are not people
that have been good for the Venezuelan people that they have raped and pillaged the economies
and societies, Venezuela. Um, all of a sudden I'm an anti progressive and I am, people are
quote, outraged at me. It's a small sliver again, and that's all we're talking about
here. Or again, I've mentioned this before, I don't see Tulsi Gabbert as the be all end
all presidential candidate that every progressive [inaudible] should support. Wow. All of a
sudden I am the enemy of the progressive movement.
People are demanding this, that the other thing from me or because I think the squad
lacks political savvy and sometimes misses the forest for the trees. Outrage. Because
I am now the enemy outraged there. And of course I'm biased because it relates to me
that outrage seems out of place and literally counter to the 95 or 99% of issues on which
we all agree and should be activists for. So the problems with all of these movements,
the problems are not the outrage itself or the social justice or the recognition of identity
in people. It's their application and their implementation. And I'll say something further,
corporate media takes advantage of these rifts. Uh, corporate media exploits them and makes
them bigger and makes profit off of them while they divide people and prevent actual progress.
So we help them to divide us the more we participate in these battles around some of these issues.
Understand outrage culture, understand why people should be outraged and wield these
ideas in a responsible way. And most people do. I know I say this often, most people actually
do. And most people recognize identity for the value that it has and they recognize social
justice for what it is that we want it to be. And we have to make sure that we don't
allow that sliver that doesn't, uh, or the, uh, agents, uh, the agents, uh, a provocateur
archons provocateur who are trying to just agitate using a fake outrage or fake social
justice warrior personas or whatever, and focus on the fact that most of us are United
as to what it is that we want to see going forward.