Donald Trump and Outrage Exhaustion

For most of the past year, Donald Trump has made me angry. No, angry doesn’t cut it. He has enraged me. He has rendered me perpetually apoplectic. He has filled me with a rage the ferocity of which scares me.

Now, for the most part, I’m just tired. I’m tired of looking at Trump. I’m tired of hearing him speak. I’m tired of hearing his ugly, intensely white male surrogates exhaust what little remains of their dignity trying to justify the inexcusable. I’m particularly tired of how Trump makes me feel. I’m tired of feeling angry so much of the time. I’m tired of being filled with fear and sadness and disappointment with a country that has elevated such an awful man to such lofty heights. I’m tired of Trump dominating both the news cycle and my psyche. I’m tired of the vulgarity and narcissism of Trump’s campaign. Outrage exhaustion set in long ago and when Trump says and does something unconscionable I just want him to go away.

I have wrestled with mental illness my entire life and I know that words have power and meaning. If we describe our lives in grim, despairing terms, we’re more likely to see our lives through that dark filter. So Trump describing our country as a third world hellhole with a woefully inadequate military where black people lead lives of total desperation and hopelessness, jobs are disappearing and the media and the entire political establishment are united in their hatred of humanity can’t help but have a profound negative impact on the psychology of our entire nation.

The unrelenting negativity, pessimism and insanity of the Trump campaign has enacted a fearsome psychological toll on our country. It has pitted us against each other and brought out the worst in the left and the right. It has lovingly catered to our worst instincts, to our fear and our racism and hero worship. Trump’s campaign has singe-handedly made the world a worst place.

Thankfully the end is in sight, but I can’t help but feel like the ugliness of this campaign has so infected political discourse that its aftereffects will be felt for decades to come. God willing, by November 9th Donald Trump’s presidential aspirations will be crushed but the virus of Trumpism has the potential to linger on, and that scares me. The man, god willing, will go the fuck away, and hopefully soon, but I worry about his toxic message continuing to inform the political landscape long after he’s roasting in the bowels of hell.

Nathan Rabin is the author of five books, most recently 7 Days In Ohio: Trump, The Gathering of the Juggalos and the Summer Everything Went Insane