Rage Against the Bubble People

Michelle Malkin, via Crooks & Liars:

Because the manufactured outrage that Qana is not really about the deaths at Qana; it is something about much larger. It is about the jihad du jour that these — that members of the religion of perpetual outrage are always ginning up. I mean, if it’s not Qana, it’s something else.

She goes on to repeat the theory that outrage over Gitmo and Abu Ghraib are equally manufactured.  What is up with the wingnuts’ insistence that all this outrage is fake?  I don’t get it.  Of these three events, not one of them needs manufactured outrage.  The outrage is real and is caused directly by the people who did these things.  And sure, perhaps people are taking advantage of this real outrage, but it’s absurd to pretend as if the outrage isn’t real.  

Outrage over Terri Schiavo needed to be ginned-up.  As does outrage over gay marriage and the “Death Tax”.  But outrage over torture and unnecessary death most certainly does not need to be manufactured.  It’s all natural and everyone feels it.  Malkin acts as if she’s given a list of phony-baloney events that nobody could be outraged about, but could only list one (beauty pageants) which might approach the necessity of fake outrage.  So why do they say such things?

The reason is simple: These are people who really do manufacture outrage, and simply assume that everyone else is doing the same.  This isn’t a case of projection.  This is a display of propagandic small-minds who can’t fathom that other people aren’t as obsessed with deception as themselves.  And they must assume that other people are doing this, as that’s the only way that they can justify this behavior in themselves.

And there is no outrage from their enemies which they will acknowledge as legitimate.  Murder.  Torture.  Degradation of human dignity.  Nothing is legitimate.  But this isn’t because they’re callous people, but because it’s all about propaganda to them.  For them, the whole world is a fake game where people will truck-in frozen dead children for marketing purposes, and can only pretend to be upset at torture.  They just can’t fathom that other people are real.  That we have real feelings and thoughts and that we hurt too.  And that we can be legitimately outraged.  It’s all a game to them.  Everything is pretend.  Everything is a matter of marketing.

But I don’t see this as coincidence, that Republicans are so prone to propaganda.  I see this as being the only way that you can be a Republican or conservative.  By ignoring reality and pretending as if the only real thing is how fake everything is.  They insist on living in a bubble world where the only important things are the things that directly affect them.  But once we acknowledge that other people’s feelings are real and that our decisions can cause real pain to real people; we can no longer be conservative.  

Being conservative means never having to look outside of yourself.  And so they’ll continue to mock other people’s feelings, while consistently faking their own.  And they’re so fake that they can’t imagine that anyone else is any different.