Am I My Own Worst Entropy?

l-r: Tucker Carlson, President Joe Biden, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

“I was in danger of verbalizing my moral impulses out of existence.”
—Father Daniel Berrigan, SJ

I never wanted to write a political blog. I intended to write book reviews and make everyone that little bit happier by ensuring they had access to good-quality reading material. Then weeks like this one happen, when powerful people expose their ugly sides to America. And I have to ask myself: what does it mean to have an opinion, even a non-political opinion, in today’s mindscape?

Midweek, two stories broke that guaranteed left-wing outrage on social media. First Tucker Carlson, that beloved sock puppet of dog-whistle racism, claimed he “couldn’t find QAnon” searching the internet. This was followed by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene hanging an anti-transgender rights poster outside her office, specifically to tweak a neighboring colleague with a transgender daughter. Both stories cultivated predictable Twitter outrage.

Both stories intended to generate online outrage, in a generation whose attention span has been dramatically shortened by internet exposure. These stories lacked substance, and essentially weren’t policy arguments. Both allowed conservatives to congratulate themselves for understanding the inside joke. They also drove leftists to salivating outrage, repeatedly linking both stories, which, as a counterargument, is about as effective as water on a grease fire.

Anger makes people feel good. The sense of righteous indignation—which, in practice, almost always means “my indignation”—activates neural receptors associated with achieving justice and vindication. Then people post their outrage on Facebook and Twitter, allowing them, us, to posture our moral outrage for public applause. Believe me, I drafted an essay about my moral wrath at Carlson and Taylor Green, the great, creeping quislings.

Then, partway through, news broke. President Biden, the guy Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson excoriate as a reincarnated Trotsky, has re-opened prison camps for migrant children. He dropped bombs on Syrian soil. Met with a procedural setback, he shrugged and rescinded his promised minimum wage hike. As many feared, Biden basically continued existing morally execrable policies, because changing things is hard.

Social media, the “public square” of 21st-Century life, rewards demonstrative outrage. When basic-cable TV pundits do stand-up comedy routines about “Antifa,” working pundits, many with lucrative Patreon deals, display their anger, and the proletariat rewards them. Dealing with real-world problems is difficult. There might be legitimate reasons why the Administration needs to warehouse unaccompanied minors or bomb sovereign nations… but it looks bad.

Tucker Carlson famously lacks nuance and subtlety, which audiences who enjoy getting angry at reality like. This has become a hallmark of modern conservatism. President 45 and Marjorie Taylor Greene make bank mimicking Carlson’s style from official pulpits; not for nothing did 45 tout his friendship with Carlson’s stablemate, Sean Hannity. America’s official right wing prospers by making difficult situations look easy.

Our organized left, by contrast, prospers by making everything look difficult. Elaborate procedural hurdles prevent us raising base wages, or forgiving student loans we wished into existence. Obamacare, virtually a free gift to insurance executives, was sold as “the best we can do right now,” the defense we’ve heard since at least Jimmy Carter. To Tucker Carlson, nothing has nuance; Joe Biden and other Democrats have nothing but nuance.

Either way, we expend our energy shouting at one another on Twitter. As Sarah Kendzior writes, Twitter specifically, and social media generally, give frequently overlooked populations an outlet to disseminate their important news. It lets people organize when geography, law, or disability prevent them from offline organizing. But it also lets people squander their energy shouting at nincompoops. Psychologically, we’ve already participated, when in fact we haven’t.

I struggle to remind myself that, just because I’ve written about issues which move me strongly, doesn’t mean I’ve actually accomplished anything. There’s a difference between participating in democracy, and shouting down a well, but sometimes that difference only becomes visible later. The current pattern, practiced under both 45 and Obama, involves linking arms on Twitter, reassuring ourselves we’re right, then… doing nothing.

Meanwhile entropy sets in, as happens in closed systems. The last President tacitly empowered literal neo-Nazis, and the opposition’s rebuttal was “punch Nazis.” That isn’t policy, though. Stopgap measures might temporarily inconvenience bigots and bomb-throwers, but the underlying conditions that make people consider Naziism a serious alternative, like widespread regional poverty, remain. And the New Guy is appeasing them.

We’re busy reminding ourselves that we’re Serious About The Problem, but that hasn’t translated into solutions. And it won’t, while we’re only congratulating one another. So when does the talking stop?