It’s an outrage! The dictionary definition of ‘outrage’ in this sense is ‘something that is grossly offensive to decency, morality or good taste’, or resentful anger caused by this. The frequency of outrages these days seems to have gone up by multiples. But is that really the case?

It often feels these days that there is simply too much mad stuff going on, day in day out. Let’s have a look at the last few weeks. As usual, something crazy happened every couple of hours. Jews were assaulted by a racist mob in Leicester Square, and the police took half an hour to show up, after ten 999 calls. This is in central London, where you’d think a conspicuous police presence would be handy. What else? A man called Darren Collins related via X the nightmarish story of how he was unable to locate his 86-year-old dementia-suffering mother after she had a fall and was admitted to hospital. A long chain of NHS functionaries refused to confirm her whereabouts because of ‘patient confidentiality’.

There is now a sense of a society falling apart, the end of the liberal postwar settlement

Then there’s the school in Waltham Forest which is on the point of a lockdown-style closure because of threats made to staff after the banning of pupils wearing political symbols and flags. And what’s this? An employment tribunal in the case of Roz Adams vs the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre has shone light on the fact that the CEO of this centre, Mridul Wadhwa, is a man.

It’s a never-ending silly season, and it’s gradually getting less silly and more sinister. It’s also exhausting. This word is often used by people on the internet when they actually mean ‘tedious, repetitive and annoying’ – but eventually real exhaustion does set in. It’s made worse because it is low status to notice any of this, and even lower status to object to it.

QOSHE - Falling apart / The age of outrage has arrived - Gareth Roberts
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Falling apart / The age of outrage has arrived

7 4
23.01.2024

It’s an outrage! The dictionary definition of ‘outrage’ in this sense is ‘something that is grossly offensive to decency, morality or good taste’, or resentful anger caused by this. The frequency of outrages these days seems to have gone up by multiples. But is that really the case?

It often feels these days that there is simply too much mad stuff going on, day in day out. Let’s have a look at the last few weeks. As usual, something crazy happened........

© The Spectator


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