Thoughts From Quarantine: On Navigating an Age of Outrage

A few thoughts about assassination, Ms. Thee Stallion, Olympic boxing, and the things that drive us mad.

Morning Coffee (Seaside, Florida 2024)

I’ve taken a long-needed respite over the last few weeks. Thanks for your patience and for continuing to read along here. If you’re not a regular subscriber, consider joining the crew of monthly supporters.

For clarity, nothing in this piece is meant as an endorsement or repudiation of any political candidate. Please read and comment with generosity.

1. The Way The World Turns

This is an upside-down world of upside facts, and today, I’m writing from the upside down. I have COVID, which is to say I’m suffering from a virus that was either:

(1) engineered in a Chinese laboratory and released to  

(a) reduce the global population and

(b) set the stage for the future globalist agenda (led by Bill Gates, of course);

OR

(2) a mutation of a bat virus that spread to humans, which sounds as implausible as Option 1(a)-(b). 

In this age of misinformation and half-truths, who can say who’s to blame for my disease? I’m sure the Twitterites could help me sort it out. They're nothing if not useful idiots. 

For two days I’ve been sitting on a couch in a lonely room with a trashcan of used tissues beside me. (This explains my surly attitude.) In my quasi-quarantine, I’ve thought a lot about the recent weeks' worth of information, misinformation, half-truths, and unbelievable full truths. Since I last wrote, here’s how the world has turned.

Turn 1: The Attempted Assassination of Trump

A brain-scrambled boy clambered up to a building overlooking a Trump rally and aimed the barrel of a semi-automatic weapon at the former President. He missed his mark by mere inches, so instead of blowing Trump's brains out on live television, he nicked his ear. A rally-goer died. Two more were seriously injured. In the days that followed, Questions were raised, like How did the shooter get on the only exposed roof? and Why did the police and Secret Service not open fire when they saw the shooter? and Was it an inside job? Barely three weeks away from the shooting, there are still more questions than answers.

Turn 2: Twerking for Harris

After assurances that President Biden was fully competent and In it to win it, Grandpa Joe threw in the towel. Kamala Harris replaced him, and almost immediately became a media darling. Less than two months earlier, Politico polling indicated,

[O]nly a third of voters think it’s likely Harris would win an election were she to become the Democratic nominee, and just three of five Democrats believe she would prevail. A quarter of independents think she would win.¹

But that was June. This is now, and wow do We The People love the now.

At one of Harris’ recent rallies, Megan Thee Stallion hyped the crowd by twerking to her song “Hot Girl.”² Conservatives were outraged at the twerking because twerking and politics are strange bedfellows. Harris supporters were outraged by the outrage and echoed Thee Stallion’s comments that Conservatives were “fake mad.”

Turn 3: A Bizarre Last Super

The weirdos in France created an oddly sexualized piece of performance art recasting Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting, Last Supper. In that Parisian performance, a chubby fella reminiscent of Papa Smurf descended to the table on a platter, where he danced semi-nude in front of a man in sequined shorts whose right testicle was, shall we say, liberated. (Feel free to look it up.) Christians were wildly and rightfully offended. Those responsible for the tableau performance offered a non-apology. Anne Descamps, the spokesperson for the 2024 Paris Olympics limply offered, “If people have taken any offense we are, of course, really, really sorry.”

Turn 4: The Women’s Boxing Controversy

Imane Khelif—an Algerian female boxer who many claim is a man—busted the nose of an Italian woman in the ring. The Algerian—who has all the parts of womanhood but an XY chromosomal makeup—became a hot topic on social media.³ Conservatives and Moderates lampooned the Olympics for allowing a man to fight a woman. Progressives harpooned the Conservatives and Moderates for being bigots and not understanding the science of the whole ordeal. Everyone offered ad-hoc opinions on the pressing issue of our age: What does gender mean anyway? As of the writing of this piece, both Khelif and a similarly situated boxer from Taiwan—Lin Tu-Ying—have clinched medal opportunities in the sport of women’s boxing. The swirl of information, disinformation, and reckless opinion continues on every media platform.

Turn 5: More Middle East Violence

Israel killed a Hamas leader in Iran with either a remote-detonation device or a “short-range projectile.” In response, Iran’s supreme leader said “We consider it our duty to take vengeance.” This is, of course, a continuation of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, which intensified with the October 7, 2023 Hamas terror attack on Israel. Deescalatory efforts have been futile. And of course, the people in our great country have refused to sit silently. Some pro-Israeli factions have supported the destruction of Palestinian Territories and excused the deaths of countless civilians. Some pro-Palestinian supporters have taken to spewing antisemitic propaganda. As we say in the South, most of these armchair commentators Don’t have a dog in this hunt. Nevertheless, they hunt.

The world has turned in other ways over the last few weeks, and if I wrote about all those turnings, this would morph into a book-length tome. But if you were to take these five discrete turnings and chart them, you’d find a common nucleus at the center of the Venn diagram—outrage. 

2. The Strange Banners

In the middle of all this upside-down-ness my family visited sunny Florida. We made our way to a particularly white stretch of beach—both the sand and population were blindingly white—and on this stretch, a homeowner hung two banners that served as a constant reminder of our upside-down state. Both showed Trump. One depicted a photo of him fist-pumping after his near assassination and bore the words “You Missed.” (Who was the You? Probably the liberals or at least the Deep State, but your guess is as good as mine.) The second bore Trump’s airbrushed mug with the words “Legend” above and “Bullet Proof” below.

You Missed (Florida 2024)

Families driving this stretch pulled their golf carts and bikes to the shoulder, stood under these two banners, and snapped family photos. Two dolled-up women (influencers?) took morning selfies under these odd campaign signs. I watched in near disbelief because I had no compartment in my brain for (a) how anyone had made these banners so quickly, (b) why someone would drop all that coin to create them, and (c) why anyone would want to take selfies with such a thing.

I considered it over the week, and I found a compartment in my brain for storing such a thing: The Strange Compartment. It wasn't weird. I don't know that I'd call insane either. Perhaps it was in poor taste. But it seemed strange because it had--in my estimation--become a sort of public altar. It was a place where true believers could bow the knee to their immortal, bulletproof legend.

These banners were a reminder: Everything everywhere is calculated to spark outrage all at once. And even when it's calculated to spark adulation, that adulation is fuel for the outrage of the non-adulators. What a mess. What an America.

3. Sexy Sexy Outrage

The modern American has become obsessed with sexy sexy outrage. The not-so-subtle curves of information, the booty-pop of misinformation, the bounce and jiggle of conspiracy—it’s more consuming than porn.

Outrage—isn't this the great distraction du jour? In our outrage, do we forget the poor, the migrant, the hulking masses of middle-class families whose income has been eroded by inflation?

Even more, in our outrage, do we miss the meanderings of our hearts, the ways we’ve pursued vice instead of virtue? Does our outrage distract us from the good, true, and beautiful? 

Let me be clear: You’re entitled to your opinion. You’re even entitled to your outrage. (I was miffed by the strange rendering of the Last Supper at the Paris Olympics.) But here’s what else I know: When I’m consumed with these feelings of outrage, when I follow every story calculated to stoke the fires of my anger, I forget what matters. I no longer live as an observationalist—one who observes, captures, and contemplates what's good, true, and beautiful.

Isaac and Katie (Florida 2024)