On ‘Radio Times’: How outrage is infecting our political discourse

There’s nothing new about political outrage, but it seems that the combination of social media, cable news and intense partisanship have heightened the rage-filled tone in American political discourse.

The news industry garners eyeballs and clicks by evoking ire, as do provocateurs like Kathy Griffin, Milo Yiannopoulos, Anne Coulter, and Bill Maher. President Trump’s candidacy was in part considered a rebuke of so-called “political correctness” which has offended many liberals sensitive to race and gender-related issues.

On Wednesday’s Radio Times, host Marty Moss-Coane held a panel discussion on the matter.

Among the guests was staff writer for The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf. He believes that shouting down an individual who has caused outrage accomplishes little. Friedersdof says “Individual dustups, the language that people use in a given situation, these aren’t the factors that are actually going to determine whether the big injustices in our country continue.”

Friedersdorf went on to say that “the outrage fatigue begins to take over and we’re no longer to make distinctions about the smaller group of things that we maybe ought to focus some outrage on.”

Marty was also joined by Yale University psychologist Jillian Jordan, and by cultural writer Angela Nagle who said “there is something about the dynamics of the online world that does incentivize not just outrage, but that you have to be more outraged than others in order to distinguish yourself.”

Listen to the full conversation on Radio Times.