Moral Outrage (Getting One's Undies in a Bunch) a Sign of an Unhealthy Conscience

Hey,hey! Ho, Ho! Kelly Anne Conway's Pumps Have Gotta Go! Some folks losing sleep over feet on the couch?  Not this bag of smelts.  And I doooooooooooo love smelts!

I sleep like a log.  Some might say. "well, so do psychopaths."  Yeah?  Name two.

Sleep is the benefit people cash-in because brave men and women stand guard over all of us. Better men than me have said so -

We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm. George Orwell

I went into a public-‘ouse to get a pint o’beer,/The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here./”The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,…/O makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep/Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;/An’ hustlin’ drunken sodgers when they’re goin’ large a bitIs five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.   Rudyard Kipling

Orwell wrote an essay on this Kipling  1890 poem Tommy Atkins and noted:

A humanitarian is always a hypocrite, and Kipling’s understanding of this is perhaps the central secret of his power to create telling phrases. It would be difficult to hit off the one-eyed pacifism of the English in fewer words than in the phrase, ‘making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep’.

This here sleeper is as  yellow as a duck's foot, but  honors the people who stand watch over his crib.

Moral outrage works well with 'humanitarians' - people who wouldn't give a starving blind girl a Confederate dime - and seem to ignite great group fuses of carbon foot-prints.

My moral outrage pencil-detonator must not be American made.

Michael Moore neither amuses, nor impels the Hickey moral tinder to spark.  Fat old guys in baseball hats scare little kids off the playground. Stranger Danger!

A recent study that I found in a magazine from the UK, the home of Orwell and Kipling, points to some interesting and telling features about folks who get morally outraged with every Tweet.

Feelings of guilt are a direct threat to one's sense that they are a moral person and, accordingly, research on guilt finds that this emotion elicits strategies aimed at alleviating guilt that do not always involve undoing one's actions. Furthermore, research shows that individuals respond to reminders of their group's moral culpability with feelings of outrage at third-party harm-doing. These findings suggest that feelings of moral outrage, long thought to be grounded solely in concerns with maintaining justice, may sometimes reflect efforts to maintain a moral identity.

No problem where I come from - guilt and shame are the real breakfast of champions.

I get yelled at by family, friends and neighbors whenever bumptious, boorish, or boastful bad old me surfaces.  Stay moral and stay at peace.

This study by Bowdoin psychology professor Zachary Rothschild and University of Southern Mississippi psychology professor Lucas A. Keefer in the latest edition of Motivation and Emotion is most telling.

Here's a list of their finds from Reason magazine.

• Triggering feelings of personal culpability for a problem increases moral outrage at a third-party target. For instance, respondents who read that Americans are the biggest consumer drivers of climate change "reported significantly higher levels of outrage at the environmental destruction" caused by "multinational oil corporations" than did the respondents who read that Chinese consumers were most to blame.
• The more guilt over one's own potential complicity, the more desire "to punish a third-party through increased moral outrage at that target." For instance, participants in study one read about sweatshop labor exploitation, rated their own identification with common consumer practices that allegedly contribute, then rated their level of anger at "international corporations" who perpetuate the exploitative system and desire to punish these entities. The results showed that increased guilt "predicted increased punitiveness toward a third-party harm-doer due to increased moral outrage at the target."
• Having the opportunity to express outrage at a third-party decreased guilt in people threatened through "ingroup immorality." Study participants who read that Americans were the biggest drivers of man-made climate change showed significantly higher guilt scores than those who read the blame-China article when they weren't given an opportunity to express anger at or assign blame to a third-party. However, having this opportunity to rage against hypothetical corporations led respondents who read the blame-America story to express significantly lower levels of guilt than the China group. Respondents who read that Chinese consumers were to blame had similar guilt levels regardless of whether they had the opportunity to express moral outrage.
• "The opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate harm-doers" inflated participants perception of personal morality. Asked to rate their own moral character after reading the article blaming Americans for climate change, respondents saw themselves as having "significantly lower personal moral character" than those who read the blame-China article—that is, when they weren't given an out in the form of third-party blame. Respondents in the America-shaming group wound up with similar levels of moral pride as the China control group when they were first asked to rate the level of blame deserved by various corporate actors and their personal level of anger at these groups. In both this and a similar study using the labor-exploitation article, "the opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate harm-doing (vs. not) led to significantly higher personal moral character ratings," the authors found.
• Guilt-induced moral outrage was lessened when people could assert their goodness through alternative means, "even in an unrelated context." Study five used the labor exploitation article, asked all participants questions to assess their level of "collective guilt" (i.e., "feelings of guilt for the harm caused by one's own group") about the situation, then gave them an article about horrific conditions at Apple product factories. After that, a control group was given a neutral exercise, while others were asked to briefly describe what made them a good and decent person; both exercises were followed by an assessment of empathy and moral outrage. The researchers found that for those with high collective-guilt levels, having the chance to assert their moral goodness first led to less moral outrage at corporations. But when the high-collective-guilt folks were given the neutral exercise and couldn't assert they were good people, they wound up with more moral outrage at third parties. Meanwhile, for those low in collective guilt, affirming their own moral goodness first led to marginally more moral outrage at corporations.

Hell, I ain't mad at nobody.

Love my straight eight.

Meatless - Monday or Friday? Go Reconcile Yourself.

Was that you, Ma?  Good Lord.

I am saving Mother Earth.

I can't get the window with this bum stepper.

It's Organic, Pa and it's Monday.

In a unanimous 12-0 vote, the council approved a resolution Friday endorsing the "meatless Monday" campaign and asking residents to make a personal pledge to ditch meat for one day a week.
The resolution makes L.A. the largest city to     sign on to the international "Meatless Mondays" campaign, which aims to reduce meat consumption for health and environmental reasons. L.A. Times

Fifty years ago, we ate fish sticks of Friday.  When the Old Man could be home for a Friday dinner we had halibut.  A couple of years later, we were told that Friday fish was out and we could have meat from animals that  " walked the earth" on Friday as well.

We were called Mackerel Snappers, Fish Eaters and Friday Pork Dodgers by our ecumenical pals who either went to public school, Timothy Lutheran, or kopped a plea and attended Little Flower Grammar School with us Cat Licks.

We did not swim at YMCA either. We went over by Leo High School, or to Ridge Park and very often took CTA and Sunburban transit to Blue Island's Memorial Park.  The YMCA preached 'birth control' and the older gents swam in the nude - very Progressive.  We swam elsewhere in swimming trunks and ate fish on Fridays.

Friday was a day of abstinence - a adjunct to the Sacrament of Penance - in preparation to a visit to the confessional box on Saturday afternoon.

The Sacrament of Penance was nuanced into Reconciliation 'Forget God, it is our human community with whom we must atone.'

The lines to the confessional box vanished.  Hey, sorry . . .heartily sorry. Sin vanished.

Now, we hear of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops returning the faithful to the purpose of Penance.  As part of this evangelical consideration, Catholics will be asked to again abstain on Fridays.

Not to be eclipsed by the Bishops, the Los Angeles City Council asks its citizens to reconcile themselves to obesity and the environment.  Meatless Mondays are Progressive Doctrine.

I get the lard legislation. Wide loads are a burden on the eyes of the lithe liberal and legislion ladlers -  Be like Us, Your Betters! Reconcile yourselves to the fact that WE know better. 

I have also heard the flatulent fantasies of the Eco-radicals holding that hoofed and cloven creatures fart up a storm and blow holes in the ozone -They, preach, "WE (you) must ALL (you) go and consume less meat, and MOTHER EARTH will have fewer eructations from bossy and Old Major splitting the pastoral sound barrier and wafting heaven-ward.  Be Vegan!"

Well, husbanded cows, pigs, sheep, and foul are Vegans.  They eat no meat with their feed - only vegetables and wholesome grains.

Moreso, I have been in the proximity of Vegans of all shapes and sizes in the produce sections of Whole Foods and let me tell you the methane atmosphere could not be attributed to Slim Jim consumers.  I was once part of a line at the checkout for Whole Foods immediately behind a pony-tailed hottie of twenty or so with a basket loaded with organic beets, beans, brown rice, tofu, carrots, kale and cabbages.  This athleticly toned and tanned young siren proceed to staccato caps of noxious rounds that would gag a hungry maggot.

In words of Kipling's Peachy Carnehan from the Man Who Would Be King, the Gwenth Paltrow look alike seemed to "break wind at both ends simultaneous - which is more, I reckon, than any god can do."

With watery eyes, but good manners I backed off and broke ranks, fitting in behind a solid-looking Bavarian Burgher clutching an expensive ham which perfumed the queue removed a safe distance from yon Vegan Vestal.

I choose to do Penance on Friday and abstain from my four-legged and feathered friends of Mother Earth.  I need to do Penance.

As to the LA Inquisition?  Go reconcile yourselves!

Blago and Kipling Celebrate Diversity

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools

R. Kipling

Blago quotes Kipling! Bloody Marvelous! The Jig's Up; Brass It Out, Old Man!
Kipling, Old Man, was the poet of Empire! Bash the Wogs! Hang Paddy! Ulster will Fight and Uster will be Right! Show 'em Good British Steel!

What? What? Haw, Haw. See here, now.

Governor Blagojevich celebrates the Poet of Diversity; here is Rudyard Kipling's American Notes:

The Chinaman waylays his adversary, and methodically chops him to
pieces with his hatchet. Then the press roars about the brutal
ferocity of the pagan.

The Italian reconstructs his friend with a long knife. The press
complains of the waywardness of the alien.

The Irishman and the native Californian in their hours of
discontent use the revolver, not once, but six times. The press
records the fact, and asks in the next column whether the world
can parallel the progress of San Francisco. The American who
loves his country will tell you that this sort of thing is
confined to the lower classes. Just at present an ex-judge who
was sent to jail by another judge (upon my word I cannot tell
whether these titles mean anything) is breathing red-hot
vengeance against his enemy. The papers have interviewed both
parties, and confidently expect a fatal issue.

Now, let me draw breath and curse the negro waiter, and through
him the negro in service generally. He has been made a citizen
with a vote, consequently both political parties play with him.
But that is neither here nor there. He will commit in one meal
every betise that a senllion fresh from the plow-tail is capable
of, and he will continue to repeat those faults. He is as
complete a heavy-footed, uncomprehending, bungle-fisted fool as
any mem-sahib in the East ever took into her establishment. But
he is according to law a free and independent
citizen--consequently above reproof or criticism. He, and he
alone, in this insane city, will wait at table (the Chinaman
doesn't count).

He is untrained, inept, but he will fill the place and draw the
pay. Now, God and his father's fate made him intellectually
inferior to the Oriental. He insists on pretending that he serves
tables by accident--as a sort of amusement. He wishes you to
understand this little fact. You wish to eat your meals, and, if
possible, to have them properly served. He is a big, black, vain
baby and a man rolled into one.

A colored gentleman who insisted on getting me pie when I wanted
something else, demanded information about India. I gave him
some facts about wages.

"Oh, hell!" said he, cheerfully, "that wouldn't keep me in cigars
for a month."

Then he fawned on me for a ten-cent piece. Later he took it upon
himself to pity the natives of India. "Heathens," he called
them--this woolly one, whose race has been the butt of every
comedy on the native stage since the beginning. And I turned and
saw by the head upon his shoulders that he was a Yoruba man, if
there be any truth in ethnological castes. He did his thinking
in English, but he was a Yoruba negro, and the race type had
remained the same throughout his generations. And the room was
full of other races--some that looked exactly like Gallas (but
the trade was never recruited from that side of Africa), some
duplicates of Cameroon heads, and some Kroomen, if ever Kroomen
wore evening dress.

The American does not consider little matters of descent, though
by this time he ought to know all about "damnable heredity." As
a general rule he keeps himself very far from the negro, and says
things about him that are not pretty. There are six million
negroes, more or less, in the States, and they are increasing.
The American, once having made them citizens, cannot unmake them.
He says, in his newspapers, they ought to be elevated by
education. He is trying this, but it is likely to be a long job,
because black blood is much more adhesive than white, and throws
back with annoying persistence. When the negro gets religion he
returns directly as a hiving bee to the first instincts of his
people. Just now a wave of religion is sweeping over some of the
Southern States.

Up to the present two Messiahs and a Daniel have appeared, and
several human sacrifices have been offered up to these
incarnations. The Daniel managed to get three young men, who he
insisted were Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, to walk into a
blast furnace, guaranteeing non-combustion. They did not return.
I have seen nothing of this kind, but I have attended a negro
church. They pray, or are caused to pray by themselves in this
country. The congregation were moved by the spirit to groans and
tears, and one of them danced up the aisle to the mourners'
bench. The motive may have been genuine. The movements of the
shaken body were those of a Zanzibar stick dance, such as you see
at Aden on the coal-boats, and even as I watched the people, the
links that bound them to the white man snapped one by one, and I
saw before me the hubshi (woolly hair) praying to a God he did
not understand. Those neatly dressed folk on the benches, and
the gray-headed elder by the window, were savages, neither more
nor less.

What will the American do with the negro? The South will not
consort with him. In some States miscegenation is a penal
offence. The North is every year less and less in need of his
services.

And he will not disappear. He will continue as a problem. His
friends will urge that he is as good as the white man. His
enemies--well, you can guess what his enemies will do from a
little incident that followed on a recent appointment by the
President. He made a negro an assistant in a post-office
where--think of it!--he had to work at the next desk to a white
girl, the daughter of a colonel, one of the first families of
Georgia's modern chivalry, and all the weary, weary rest of it.
The Southern chivalry howled, and hanged or burned some one in
effigy. Perhaps it was the President, and perhaps it was the
negro--but the principle remains the same. They said it was an
insult. It is not good to be a negro in the land of the free and
the home of the brave.

Actually, Rudyard Old Cock, the Colonists made one President, much like that Paddy some years before . . . Fitzgerald Kennedy something.

I voted for the other chap McCain, but stand damn proud of my country. Now, as to the well-coiffed Governor who spouts your verse - shackles and irons by year's end Old Top.

Sentiments, dear boy, sentiments. Kipling was a Progressive Clean Government Lad. Quite.

As IF!

Click my post title for Kipling's American Notes.