Outrage: A Deeper View

I've been working on an essay about outrage, which seemed appropriate for this last year or more--I've been writing it ever since Donald Trump was elected again in November 2024. Or probably sooner, during the run-up to that election. I was satisfied with my inquiry into how I could be outraged by a neighbor, comparing that to what was happening nationally and berating myself for not saving my anger for bigger things. And then Minneapolis happened and things ramped up. My essay seemed frivolous, my willingness to get triggered by inconsequential things compared to the news now. So I wrote an Op-Ed that was published today in the Anchorage Daily News. My sister told me she couldn't see it because of the paywall, so posting it in its entirety here instead of the url.

Righteous anger. Helpless outrage. Many of us have been consumed by both in the last months and weeks since the presidential election. Since Doge. Since masked men converged on our streets. Kidnapping. Teargassing. Rubber bullets. Now, Minneapolis. Federal agents who knock down doors, drag people out of cars, arrest law-abiding people, U.S. citizens, children, harm, and now murder people without fear of retribution. Renee Good. Alex Pretti. The air of unreality, the sense that this cannot be happening, is palpable. Except, it is happening.

This year has taken me back to being a child, feeling what it is to be assaulted and powerless. I made up my own rules: There are nice people and mean people. I needed some explanation for my father’s behavior and my first-grade nun, who was just plain mean. Fortunately, I got the nice nun in second grade.

Outrage may call up adrenaline and cortisol and prime us as human beings to act, but I, constrained as I was by parental and religious training, was unable to speak or do anything but hide, then and later, when I was assaulted, like many women, as a young teenager by a relative. There may have been a way to manage my emotions and the conflicts in my family, but I couldn’t find it. By my last year of high school, I saw nightly displays of outrage on television: protests, marches, beatings, arrests. What could I do? Those old, white men had all the power. My stomach was in a permanent roil with all that was wrong. But I couldn’t see a way for me to have any effect.

Maybe it’s okay, at a young age, to divide the world into good and bad, to create clarity for our own protection. As we grow older, though, we need more, an ability to know what we value and be willing to go to the mat for it, while engaging with a world that doesn’t look like the one we want, the one we thing we deserve. The right one?

There’s the division again—good and bad, right and wrong. How can I be with this world as it is and not be angry all of the time? What will have me speak effectively and express my passion and love for people, which is what I most long to do? But then there’s a fresh outrage, like the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pettri, and I have to right my world, recover from being knocked askance again by the cruel, senseless and lawless actions taking place.

The real tragedy is that childish outrage typically doesn’t result in action that makes a difference at all. The quick, automatic, and furious reactions, both mine and others, are often petulant and ineffective. How can I care deeply about issues without turning into a five-year-old with mean, awful people to deal with? How might I now stand my ground but in reasoned discourse, not run to my room, resigned, like I did as a teenager, convinced that I am powerless to effect change?  

I won’t listen to the bald-faced lies of this administration, and I want my outrage expressed now in community. I’ve gotten a clue. Participation. Connection. Engagement. The community-wide protests and demonstrations taking place across the country are occasions to join together, the antidote to being alone, isolated, and furious. And now Minneapolis. And preparing for the next provocation, atrocity, murder. Instead of throwing something at the television, or yelling at the computer for the latest horribly offensive thing, I can make phone calls, write letters, post commentary. I can join others in speaking for what we’re not willing to tolerate, and what we are willing to stand for.

Underneath my outrage, I’ve realized I carry deep sorrow and grief. It’s helpful to label the feelings that overwhelm us. Outrage is often a young and uncontrollable emotion—my outrage belongs to a child or young teen who wails, retreats for solace, and hates the meanie who upset me. But grief I can sit with, a natural response to the hideous acts around us right now. I'm grieving because what I value is being chopped up like kindling to be burned and trashed. And I'm not going to have that. That realization allows me to plan, assess the available options, and take action.

I can continue to respond to the truly horrendous steps being taken to dismantle our democracy, but not with the helpless and powerless versions of myself. Participate with my community. Reach out to my worldwide network. Find strength and resources in numbers, encouragement in action. Resist. Demonstrate. Support those who feel as helpless and powerless as I sometimes do. Together we can turn our world upright and care for a common good.