Entitled American Outrage Is the Cancer that Will Kill the World

Thanks for the TIPS!I used to work as the editor for a small expat web page. One day, my boss looked up from his computer and said, “Sometimes I get bizarre emails containing arrogant and entitled lectures on morality.” His face contorted into an expression of disgust, “And they’re always, always, always from Americans.”I wasn’t offended by this statement in the least. I’d moved to Peru to get away from entitled American outrage culture. But since then, I’ve learned that there is no escape, and it’s only getting worse.Sticking our heads in the sand isn’t going to solve the problem. If we don’t address the fundamental flaws in American ideology soon, I’m fearful that there won’t be anything left to save.Outrage is always counter-productiveIn the United States, a huge percentage of the population thinks they have the “divine” right to oppress and exploit the people around them. They put their hands on their hips and call for the manager. They scream about their rights. They’ll work themselves up into a spittle-spewing rage and indulge in physical violence, all while blaming you for “provoking” them.It’s a nation of toddlers throwing temper tantrums from positions of power.The problem is, these toddlers have wasted more resources amassing weapons of mass destruction than any other nation in history. As if that’s not bad enough, American society currently seems to be on a collision course with straight-up authoritarian fascism. We’ve already put kids in cages.Who’s next? Homosexuals? Immigrants? Atheists? Teachers? Non-Christians? Black people? Women? Absentee voters? Sinners (whatever that means)?If you’re not on this list yet, you will be eventually. The people who start writing lists like these never stop until they’ve found fault with everybody. You should be worried.Too many people seem to think that their entitled American outrage is a shield that will protect them from everything. They scream, “You can’t do that to me, I’m an American! I have rights!”But the truth is the power wielding toddlers can and will do it to you. Your outrage is not your super power. You’re going to get old, you’re going to get weak, they’re going to take everything from you, and you’re going to die. When that happens, it will be too late to realize that maybe you would have been better off placing your faith in a personality based on rational diplomacy.It’s getting really close to too late.Leaving the whole world blind…When I was working abroad and our publication received entitled emails from outraged Americans, it fell to me to handle them. I knew that being polite wasn’t the answer. When Americans start thumping up to you with their chest puffed out, the worst thing you can do is retreat.My boss forwarded me a message. The author of the message was furious about something that he thought he read, but he’d completely misinterpreted the text.I wrote back, “Well, you make a valid point. Unfortunately, your valid point is a response to a series of words that must have appeared in some other article because you won’t find them in our publication. May I suggest some reading glasses? That might help to prevent embarrassing outbursts on your part in the future. I accept your apologies in advance. Have a great day!”After I sent the response, I showed it to a couple of my co-workers. Their eyes got wide, and they began to laugh, but they would have never sent something like that.“It’s okay,” I said, “this is how you deal with Americans.”But I was wrong. American entitlement outrage only builds on itself. It escalates until people come to think a small slight is sufficient cause to eradicate your family line from this Earth.It never stops expanding. They go after you. They go after everyone who looks like you. They go after everyone who speaks like you. Entitled American outrage doesn’t end until there’s nothing left to burn.People will dedicate their lives to your ruinMy mom recently had to deal with a tax assessor who “pulled some strings” so she’d have to pay more on her property taxes. These little jerks show up at your door with a smirk to brag about what they just did to you.“Now you’re going to have to pay thousands of dollars more in taxes every year, I guess that’ll teach you.”This kind of behavior is retaliation, but for what?Well, prior to the tax increase, my mom had an issue with the gas company in charge of winter heating. She prepaid in the summer, but then the price of gas went up. The trouble was, the company didn’t buy the gas, so they sent her another bill. She said, “No! I paid this already. If you didn’t buy enough, that’s your problem!” The disagreement led to a series of battles. Eventually, she got her money back and closed her account, but the company was furious with her… furious.Furious people in a small town start calling in favors.“We’ll make you pay for this!”Entitled, privileged, outraged Americans decide that you need to bail them out whenever they mess up. If you don’t, they “pull strings” and make you pay in other ways.I think conservatives drive around during election years and write down the addresses of the people with yard signs they don’t agree with. This is why you see conservative yard signs or nothing. I suspect some people put up conservative signs just to stay off the hit list.Retaliation.Retribution.They show up at your door to dance on your grave and chant, “Do you see now? Because you didn’t pay the extra amount for the gas, you’ll end up paying thousands of dollars more every year in taxes. Perhaps now you understand that compliance is the better way!”“But, we had an agreement, and you were the one who didn’t fulfill the terms of that agreement, not me.”“Well, that’s not the way I see it and here we are.”Consider all the wasted energyEntitled, outraged Americans will sit around plotting your destruction. They are nourished by it. They think it’s funny the whole time. The hope of your pain and defeat is all they have to live for.Compete!Capitalism!Crush all that oppose you!I’m not even talking about major plots like kidnapping, murder, or attempts to overthrow the government. If you so much as cut off the wrong guy in traffic, there’s a pretty high chance that person will take down your license plate, find out who you are, and spend months trying to figure out a way to “stick it” to you.You put yourself at risk just by posting your job title on social media. Entitled, outraged Americans will find a reason to come after you at your place of work.The innocent are under constant attackThe worst part is, you can’t protect yourself by being respectful in this country. An entitled, outraged American might feel “provoked” by the shoes you wear, or who you choose to date, or the book you’re reading, or the color of your skin, or the language you speak.They walk around on a hair trigger itching for a fight.Entitled, outraged Americans think they’re retaliating against you, but it’s really just a sucker punch. They’re always on the lookout for an excuse to dedicate their every waking moment to your ruin.If they don’t have groups of people to hate, they invent them.Election integrity is another name for voter suppressionIf a certain person had ever been held to the same legal standard as average US citizens, we wouldn’t be facing such an imminent threat to democracy. But again and again, politicians, the media, and the courts let him off the hook.They almost always justify their actions with some variation of “Let the voters decide in the elections.”The problem is that although the judges will fight tooth and nail to get traitors on the ballot, they won’t so much as lift a finger to protect our right to vote.The voting rights act was gutted in 2013. Districts are gerrymandered. Polling stations forget to order the right amount of ballots. Absentee ballots are attacked and drop off boxes are restricted. Nefarious forces purge voter rolls. Restrictive ID laws are allowed which can easily be used as excuses to turn voters away. Some states create a media spectacle by arresting voters under invalid claims of voter fraud in order to limit turn out.This is far from a complete list.Voters aren’t allowed to decideIf the political theory at work is that “the voters must decide” to stop outrage candidates, then the voters must be given the right to vote. When you look at the political reality of the United States, it feels as if the descent into authoritarianism is a deliberate objective rather than an unintended consequence.Voters can’t decide if the right to vote is under constant attack!In the United States, rational, hardworking people live in perpetual fear. When I was in my 20s, I thought it was a game. Perhaps it is a game, but it’s not Tiddlywinks, it’s Russian roulette. The trouble is the privileged, outraged, and entitled force us to take a second turn in their place.It’s not “revenge,” it’s an unprovoked assaultI’d thought I’d scored a win on a jerk when I sent off my snide email. Instead, I created an enemy who lurked, seething, behind the scenes, waiting to come after me at a later date to claim his “payback” for an altercation he initiated.Chances are, when you run into a string of bad luck, it’s not an accident. Somebody’s got an ax to grind.I’m old enough now to have been served more than my share of humble pie. I don’t look for fights anymore and I don’t finish them. Instead, I try to smile and say, “Thank you,” but even that isn’t enough.Hate is the only thing that sustains the outrage class, hate and sitting around plotting. It’s the most pathetic worldview I can imagine. They live to gather enough power so that someday they’re in a position to hinder an innocent person as retribution for a perceived wrong. It’s life erosion. No consequence is too petty.They love receiving customer satisfaction surveys so they can give you a rating of 1. Even though they’re not there to see the pain it causes, they delight in it.The cumulative effect of hateThe problem is, the petty tactics of inconsequential people begin to add up over time. Day after day we have to endure slight after slight. They won’t raise our wages so much as a penny. They won’t offer us so much as a band aid when we’re cut. They won’t give us a thimbleful of water when we’re parched. All they do is spend their whole existence sticking pins into their fellow human beings and thumping their chests about how morally superior they are.The part I don’t understand is why they’re still here? I guess they’re all living on generational wealth accrued through stolen labor. We’re stuck reading stories about bad business practices and rich people hemorrhaging money. But their money never goes out, and they never go away. The rest of us are struggling to earn 7 dollars an hour, and we read about rich people losing 70 million. Somehow, they get to keep being rich, and the rest of us are trapped in perpetual poverty no matter how hard we work.They don’t go away because they always have the threat of their entitled, American outrage to fall back on, and they use it to get us dupes to bail them out again and again and again. We’ve all been conditioned because we know if we don’t keep them happy, we’ll lose our jobs our houses or our property taxes will go up or who knows what? It could be anything, and it’s guaranteed to be devastating.Outrage never brings us to a solutionAt some point, Americans have to understand that we can’t put our heads down, do our work, and expect that we won’t become targets. We’re all targets, and when your number is called, you’ll quickly discover that the “outrage armor” you’re so proud of is as flimsy and worthless as a piece of paper bearing the signature of a fake elector.We should all be terrified that a self-obsessed toddler is in control of our obscene arsenal of weapons we’ve wasted so many resources to stockpile. All outraged, entitled Americans care about is spite and retribution.Setting off a world bomb would be the ultimate payback for a lifetime of imagined offenses.We have to choose reason. We have to teach our children to reject the illusion of power that comes from entitled American outrage.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! 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