Manufactured Outrage For Morons

No, there isn't a draft for World War III.

Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash

by Justin Rosario

The American right wing no longer exists in a reality tethered to facts. It operates solely in a reality manufactured by a media machine designed to keep stupid people in a state of perpetual outrage and fear. This is how the Republican Party has both captured and been captured by its base. The average Republican voter will never vote for a Democrat because Democrats are the greatest evil of all time. Elected Republicans dare not speak the truth because they risk actual harm at the hands of the mob of violent morons they’ve created. 

To see this play out in real time, look at what happened last week. Three changes were added to the United States Selective Service in a bill passed by the House. First, the age range was extended from 18-25 to 18-26. The second was that, for the first time in American history, women will now be required to register as well. The third, and this is the one that sent the right into hysterics, is that registration is now automatic.

The reaction from the outrage hustlers was…unhinged.

Naturally, the alt-left got in on the action, as well. Because, let’s be honest, there’s precious little daylight between the two when it comes to unhinged conspiracies and their talking points:

There’s just one little problem with all of this professional Sturm und Drang: Selective Service is not the draft.

Did I say “one problem?” I meant ”several problems.” Not only is Selective Service not the draft, which was ended in, let me check my notes, 1973, so over half a century ago, but it’s been active this entire time. That means every single male American citizen had to sign up for it. 

Yes, even during Reagan. And Bush. And Bush again. And Trump. None of them shut it down. I doubt any of them even tried. We know Trump dodged the draft with fake bone spurs and W. Bush’s daddy got him a position in the Texas Air National guard but neither of them were in any rush to end the same Selective Service MAGAland is suddenly crying rivers of tears over.

The only real difference between what we were doing before and now is that no one has to bother registering. Or get in trouble because they didn’t know they were supposed to. It just gets done.

There’s a lot of whining about women being added to Selective Service, both from the “women will degrade the military!” and “women are too precious and delicate to be forced into war!” camps. Spare me the misogyny and sexism.

Oh, one last little problem with the “Democrats want to murder your children!” narrative:

Yes, you are reading that correctly. The bill was passed along party lines. By Republicans. Whoops.

Still, the foaming-at-the-mouth outrage was something to behold over something as innocuous as removing some paperwork from people’s lives. But the outrage is the point. It doesn’t have to make sense. It doesn’t have to be true. It just has to be screamed as loudly as possible over and over again in an echo chamber. 

Remember, in MAGAland, Democrats are the bloodthirsty warmongers. Sure, 90% or more of all Trump voters eagerly voted for George W. Bush and lustily cheered his illegal war in Iraq, but that’s all been memoryholed. By 2009, no one had ever heard of George W. Bush. Didn’t Obama let 9/11 happen? Or maybe it was Clinton? It’s so hard to remember these little details.

The press, of course, helps sell the lie. Who can ever forget this piece of excrement?:

Trump, of course, sat back and allowed Russia to run rampant, setting the stage for the Ukraine invasion. He pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, thus setting Iran on course to develop nuclear weapons. And twiddled his thumbs while China made huge strides on the global stage, thus making it harder to curb their superpower ambitions. All of which makes the world less safe.

Don’t even get me started on how he botched the Afghanistan War, almost triggered a nuclear conflict with North Korea, and was desperately looking for a country to invade to boost his approval ratings.

But Republicans are the party of peace and love. If one ignores their plans to deploy the US military against the civilian population of the United States, of course. The press tends to gloss over all of this and so the outrage machine feeds red meat to morons. The morons stay angry and incapable of thinking straight. They vote based on fear and hate instead of “Hey, if Republicans cut another $2 trillion in taxes for billionaires, that’s bad for me!”

Republicans, in turn, must keep producing sound bites to feed to the propaganda machine they built. If their base suspects for one second that the people they elected are no longer of the faith, the death threats come. That’s routine for Democrats and they have the spine to take it. Republicans, though, are cowards. All of them. They live in terror of the monster they’ve created lest it turn on them.

So now the whole process is self-perpetuating. The base demands its fix. The propaganda mill produces it and those at the top deliver it. There’s no way out until the whole thing collapses under the weight of its hubris. What happens after that? I don’t know. We just have to make sure they don’t take us down with them, and that means beating them at the ballot box in November, again.

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