Outrage Fatigue

In politics there is discussion of donor fatigue, when people have given to enough causes that they just say enough. Certainly, as I am starting graduate school in the fall, my finances dictate that I have to choose precisely what I support in that. However, I find a greater problem for me is outrage fatigue. There are simply so many things to be outraged by that one gets worn out trying to fight.

The New York Times brings news that in addition to giving a strong partisan bias to those in power at Public Broadcasting in favor of the conservatives, the House Republicans are moving to cut federal funding for public broadcasting. Watching one of the last respectable news sources slowly sink into the mire that captured the mainstream corporate news long ago is agonizing, it needs to be fought.

This on the heels of NYT also reporting about a member of the Aministration editing reports on climate change to lessen evidence of human-influenced warming who now after resigning is to work for ExxonMobil. This kind of boldfaced distortion should be causing chaos in Washington, but instead it seems to barely cause a ripple.

With the lies that got us into Iraq, revealed in part by the Downing Street Memo, with the breaking of Valerie Plume's cover, with the blatant propagandizing on the part of the Administration, with the increasing redistribution of money from poor to rich making the gap between the haves and the have nots even larger...there has been so much to be outraged about from the Republicans the past six years and yet they have never been held to account, it is easy to just feel powerless and give up. It hurts too much to care about the state of the country.

However, there is potential light at the end of this cold, dark tunnel. With the Republicans at an historically low mark on popular favor, there is a chance for the Democrats to regain some power in Congress in the mid-terms in 2006. The difference of having power in one of the houses would be tremendous. Instead of having generally ignored panels on the urgent problems of our days as Rep. Conyers and others presently have, the Democrats would have the full force of the Legislative branch behind them to hold the Administration's feet to the fire. Just as the Democrats were able to with Nixon and Reagan (and more trivially, the Republicans were able to go after Clinton.)

So while it may be hopeless to try to put up a fight against individual movements in Washington, Democrats all around the country need to invest full effort into the 2006 mid-terms. We must go after every House seat, especially Tom DeLay's. We must go after every Senate seat that is being contested. The Presidential elections may hold the glory, but now that 2004 has passed, 2006 really is the most important election in at least my lifetime. Locally it wouldn't hurt to grab the Governorship while we are at it so we wouldn't have so much great legislation vetoed.

While I have been suffering from a good bit of outrage fatigue myself of late, thinking about how much the 2006 elections (and Ref C and D this fall) could change allows me to focus my outrage squarely on a limited enough issue that it isn't overwhelming. I just hope I don't have to find out if I could continue to muster outrage were the 2006 elections not to make things better.