Do not dampen your moral outrage about the General Election

This morning reminds me of November 9th — the first time I woke up to a much darker world than I’d gone to sleep in, politically speaking. I had participated in my first election the year Barack Obama came into office, and I was a passionate and fervent Bernie supporter in 2016. After the DNC scandal, I begrudgingly found a place in my heart for Hillary Clinton and came to admire her long political career. I had been so sure that on that morning I would wake up to a woman in the White House.

And of course, I was very very wrong.

In many ways this morning feels very much like that morning, and although I am grateful that last night’s exit polls gave me an inkling of what was to come, I still feel the shock. I still feel the fear of realizing your values don’t line up with the values of your government. I read articles about voter fraud in Scotland and I remember how little came from the investigations into Russia in the 2016 Election. I felt betrayed by the decision the Electoral College made to elect Trump against the popular vote, yet I feel similarly today because of the people’s vote. In 2016, I cried while mopping out multi-purpose rooms at an outdoor school and today I cried in therapy. Things feel very much the same.

I took an Uber to my appointment, and when the driver noticed my accent, he asked me what I thought about living in England compared to the States. “If you’d asked me any other day…” I said.

He laughed, and asked if I was “on that side” and I said, “yes, I believe that a government should take care of its people”. He agreed, and told me that he saw a force at work in life that many people didn’t notice, that was manipulating people into action without their awareness. Politicians, government, the media. “We are being programmed to accept that this is how it is, that these things are normal.”

4 million children living in poverty and no one is accountable[1].

The ability of working people to access healthcare is being sold off, and no one is accountable.

This will be our new normal if we stop paying attention. 300,000 people dying because of government austerity measures will be normalized when no one is held accountable and we are no one longer angry about it.

A large portion of sexual harassment and rape prevention is dedicated to dispelling the myths we believe about sexual violence. These myths are stereotypes that blame the victim, exonerate the perpetrator and dismiss the violence. They sound like someone saying she shouldn’t have worn such a tight dress to an office event then, or she shouldn’t have gotten so drunk, she should have known better.

A large majority of people believe these myths because witnessing and experiencing inequality can be distressing[2]. Inequality is often a threat to the survival of those who experience it. For example, teens who are LGBTQ+ and who have been disowned from their families make up 40% of homeless youth[3], leaving them often in dangerous and life-threatening situations. We are highly social creatures who likely register inequality as a threat because we respond to it, even if it isn’t happening to us. Numerous studies have shown that simply witnessing harassment at work can cause people to feel more depressed, more anxious, less satisfied with their work and more likely to leave their job [4]– and that sounds a lot like the fight or flight response to me.

But because fixing systemic inequality is a hugely complex problem that is difficult to solve, it is often easier for a person to remedy their own emotional distress instead. We can ease our distress by convincing ourselves of one of two things: either inequality and the system that allows for it is actually fair and legitimate or we must accept that this is just the way things are. These two ideas are effective at diminishing our emotional distress — and one emotion in particular.

Moral outrage.

It’s the emotion that shouts but that’s so fucking wrong! and motivates us to demand the righting of whatever unequal thing we are reacted to. Moral outrage looks like calls for perpetrators to be held accountable, for systems that allowed violence to occur to be held accountable, for victims to be helped and for moral values to be rewritten in the form of laws or organisational policies. These critical feelings go away when we believe that this is just how things are –

and I am reminded of this morning. Of the general election.

I am reminded of how many people I’ve heard say how gutted they are, but this is just the way it is.

Our moral outrage requires anger. Change requires anger, energy, movement, motivation.

So do not numb your emotional distress by believing that this is just how it is. Go to the pub and soothe your wounds with friends, but do not drown your fear. Take a toke, but also take a minute to grieve if you are feeling lost. I know today I am grieving the idea of the better world I would wake up in, and it’s okay if you are too.

If inequality is the match, then let what you feel today be the kerosene to carry you through whatever darkness we face next. If you despair, remember that you despair for good reason. You are afraid for good reason. You are angry for a very good fucking reason.

Do not dampen your moral outrage. Stay angry, stay present, and stay fierce.