The End of Outrage

Why is the future Like This?

As a historian by schooling, and a lifelong politics junkie to boot, I’ve developed a thick skin over the years. Most headlines provoke nothing in me. I read them and automatically place them in the context of everything else I’ve read, forgetting in the process that I live in the country they’re describing.

Elon Musk’s “awkward gesture” made my stomach turn. It’s no secret that Mr. Musk has harbored increasingly antisemitic views since his acquisition of Twitter, now renamed in the same language as X Æ A-12. This language, Mr. Musk’s native edgelordese, provides him a degree of cover for displaying what I would call two obvious Nazi salutes in quick succession, if only I had the money to defend the inevitable lawsuit.

NGOs and media organizations have been careful about analogizing the “awkward gesture” to its most famous counterpart, perhaps because Mr. Musk has demonstrated an incredible willingness to sue his critics out of existence. Most recently, Mr. Musk filed a lawsuit against Media Matters for their recommendation that advertisers leave X, lest their brand become associated with Nazi memes. The massive legal costs forced Media Matters to lay off at least a dozen employees.

In the U.S., defendants are responsible for their legal costs, no matter the quality of the claim against them. This, combined with how easy it is to abuse libel law,¹ means that it’s possible for the rich to sue the less-rich into silence, through the sheer brute force of lawyer’s fees.

It’s been like this for decades. Long before the presidency was a twinkle in Mr. Trump’s eye, freedom of speech was essentially voidable for any plaintiff with enough money. The decorum Democrats so mourn, the norms and mores Mr. Trump so joyfully flaunts, were never much more than a pinky promise to show some consideration before using abusive tactics.

This pinky promise was only ever as strong as the personal integrity of the people involved. The norms certainly didn’t prevent real harm from being done – just ask Ms. Lewinsky.² But since the Nixon administration, the norms have done something to ensure that politicians followed the spirit of the law, not just the letter. This wasn’t out of goodwill, mind. Back when the Presidency was conditioned on being a lawyer who had spent his career working through the ranks of his party, personal integrity mattered in some way, since aspiring politicians needed to stay in the good graces of their party’s leadership.

Mr. Clinton’s impeachment, and indeed some of Mr. Nixon’s actions – such as destroying so many records that the Presidential Records Act was enacted to make him knock it off – were early warning signs as to the limits of the norms. That is, the approval of your peers only matters so long as you’re a peer. Once you’re the President of the United States, your personal conduct becomes much harder to police. When Mr. Trump came down that golden escalator, his explicit promise was to make the norms of D.C. voidable, taking this loophole to its natural conclusion. Unconstrained by legal training, social graces, or logic, Mr. Trump was free to drain the swamp.

For all his broken promises, Mr. Trump should get credit for that one: he did, indeed, cause a massive exodus of competence, from Paul Ryan to Mike Pence. Hundreds of years of lawmaking experience is gone from D.C., forever. The reasons vary – some people quit out of frustration before Mr. Trump could exile them, and some, of course, were exiled – but the end effect is the same. The only people left to advise him the likes of Elon Musk, a man too racist even for Steve Bannon.

So, the outrage of a President’s coworkers isn’t enough. What about the law?

Well, that hasn’t been working great, either. While Democrats fretted about Mr. Trump’s incredible rudeness, he seems to have learned something interesting. That is, laws themselves are social contracts, just like the norms. In general, citizens have no choice but to uphold their end of the bargain, since after all they are powerless in the face of the massive bloc of violence the State wields. Who will defy the law when following it is a prerequisite to normal participation in society?

Donald Trump, of course. He, like many of the ultra-wealthy, never participated in society normally. For his entire life, he has existed constrained by a very different set of laws, which say that you needn’t pay taxes if you can pay the fine, you can fly on the pedo jet if you so desire, and every punishment will bounce right off you. Who now remembers Trump University?

Just those who lost everything. After a lifetime of that, perhaps it’s no wonder that Mr. Trump began to wonder why the politicians on T.V. fussed so much about the laws and the norms, when those things never played that big of a role in his life. And it turns out he was right. All it took was about a decade of holding a pillow over the judiciary’s face. After all, the religious right has spent decades weakening it, such that Mr. Trump’s task was no harder than killing a fellow nursing home resident. Organizations like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Heritage Foundation have spent hundred of millions of dollars setting up a long line of dominoes that, when tripped, will “recover the robust Christendomic theology of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries.” The fact that Mr. Trump was the first person insane enough to knock over a domino doesn’t make him particularly special.

How can it be that a billionaire can stand on stage at the inauguration of a President whose installation he funded, and make two “awkward gestures” in quick succession, and the whole populace will deny what they saw? That’s the question for today. The question for yesterday was: How can a billionaire tweet “you have spoken the actual truth” in response to a neo-Nazi and face no consequences? And before that, it was: How can a billionaire sue a media organization out of existence and face no consequences? And before that: How can a billionaire suddenly put hundreds of people out of work and face no consequences?

Already, Mr. Musk’s awkward gesture has been swallowed by a deluge of worse news. A few days ago, Mr. Trump suggested a simple solution to Gaza’s woes: relocation to Jordan and Egypt. Good thing that’s never been tried before. Specifically, he said, “You're talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” which is crass and disgusting, and sensible only if cruelty is the point.

As I write this, my disabled friends and acquaintances are panicking about the sudden possibility of losing their government benefits. They got about two days’ notice. The vivid disgust I felt at the inauguration lives on as something for me to remember, as the rest of the world forgets. I can’t really hold it against anyone. There’s just so much to be upset about that any one example pales in comparison to the whole.

We expect that horrible things cannot happen. If someone commits a crime, then the Law will stop them, and if not the Law, then the outpouring of popular anger at the transgressor will shame them into repentance. The first ten days of Mr. Trump’s second term are an excellent case against this. Outrage has never been a political tool, at least not one the 21st century American public can avail itself of. To quote Kurt Vonnegut: “During the Vietnam War... every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.”

Americans have believed for far too long that their chiding means anything at all to the rich, and that misconception serves the interests of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and every other oligarch kissing the strongman’s ring. So let me be clear. Every time you click on a link that outrages you, every time a post on X leaves you feeling defeated and sapped, you are letting them win.

If outrage could have stopped Mr. Trump, it would have by now. What’s left is concrete political action – which, not for nothing, Democratic politicians are finally taking. If you aren’t a Capitol Hill staffer (and I mean, look at you), then your actions can and should look different than theirs. In my local community, I’ve been printing out and distributing these ACLU pamphlets to the migrants I know, donating, and doing some bigger work I can’t talk about openly.³

As for Mr. Musk – he’s not the first rich antisemite, and he won’t be the last. Even if I can’t confidently say that his gestures were Nazi salutes, I can say that anyone who makes jokes about the genocide in my people’s living memory is antisemitic, plain and simple. And his coziness with latter-day Nazis suggest it’s a bit more than a joke. But no matter how much he whines, no matter how often he makes a stupid post, we will outlive him, just like the pathetic Fords and Coughlins before him. Cry about it, Elon.

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1. All one needs to do is file in a jurisdiction without an anti-SLAPP law, or where anti-SLAPP laws are weaker. This was Mr. Musk’s strategy in the Media Matters suit.

2. This publication supports consequences for powerful men who solicit sexual favors from underlings in no position to refuse, though it must also ruefully concede that this was not top-of-mind for the GOP when pressing for Mr. Clinton’s impeachment.

3. The most important activism will not be posted on social media.