The danger of "righteous indignation" ...

It makes some otherwise normal, rational people go off the rails.

And it can accelerate.  Once someone falls prey to it, even the smallest things, real or imagined, or completely fake, can push them further into the realm of virtual insanity.

Worse, some now feel entitled to let loose and abandon any moral restraints they once had.  That’s because they are responding in their view to an offense so grave, so terrible, so evil, they have the right – nay, the moral obligation – to do practically anything to counter it. 

Including resorting to physical violence. 

Righteous indignation powers ISIS and innumerable jihad-like movements around the world. It powers white supremacists. It also powers the Antifa and BLM activists.  It powers the extreme right and the extreme left, among others.  It breeds mindless hate that ignores facts, reason, and anything else that might serve as an anchor to reality for those lost in its thrall. 

Once righteous indignation starts it’s easy to keep going.  It’s also easy to feed the fire and inflame people even further, pushing them to commit acts they’d never do otherwise.

That makes it the preferred tool of demagogues and propagandists. 

If you’ve wondered how the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, the Nazi invasion of Poland, and the slaughter of millions of innocent Jews happened, that’s how.  The motives behind these atrocities may differ, but why so many other ordinary, decent people then willingly joined in resulted from righteous indignation artificially fomented by the perpetrators. 

Righteous indignation festers like a virus within some people.  Some are predisposed to outrage.  It’s also highly communicable. It takes surprisingly little to spread; all it takes is a bit of encouragement, a nudge, from the right people with the right message to fire up in people harboring the virus.  Before you know it, you’re in a full-blown epidemic. 

Sanity, logic and facts go out the window, replaced by righteous indignation. Righteous indignation substitutes more easily manipulated emotions over reality.  It’s the stuff from which otherwise ridiculous conspiracy theories can be manufactured, facts be damned.    

Did Trump collude with the Russians?  Is he a pawn of Putin? Did Russians rob Hillary of the Presidency?  Is Trump a white supremacist?  Does he hate all immigrants?  Is he a racist? Does he hate gays? Is he a criminal who should go to prison for obstructing justice and other crimes? 

There are no facts to support these allegations against Trump.  None.  That does not stop these charges being repeated time and again by those in the media and Democrats in Congress or campaigning for 2020.  The sad part is that many of them know full well all these allegations are not only baseless but demonstrably false.  Yet they persist, hoping to foster righteous indignation in the American public, simply because they hate Trump and his supporters. 

Not because he’s done anything wrong, but because he represents a challenge to their agenda. 

Meanwhile, the same people in the Democrat Party and the media are attacking on a variety of other fronts, again using righteous indignation as their weapon of choice to avoid facts and produce the results they desire.

Stacey Abrams still claims she won the race for governor in Georgia. And she keeps saying the only reason she doesn’t have the job now is racially motivated voter suppression. This is demonstrably false. She lost by almost 55,000 votes, even though she outspent her opponent by $2 million in an election where voter registration and participation were among the highest in Georgia in decades, including among blacks. There’s no proof of any voter suppression. 

However, many in the media and many Democrats still publicly say she actually won. That’s impossible, of course.  They know it, too.  But they are hoping the charge of racially motivated voter suppression will cause righteous indignation among blacks and other minorities – and their liberal base – to drive more votes for Democrats in the next election.    

Hillary is the queen of righteous indignation.  She's still playing the same card of the aggrieved victim who really won against Trump, again with no facts on her side. She claims she was robbed by Russians, sexism, dirty tricks, and an archaic Electoral College system.  

In reality, Hillary herself lost the election by being a terrible candidate who made really bad campaign decisions. Plus, she called almost half of America “deplorables.”

She did win the popular vote, mainly by running up her numbers in a single state (California), but she lost fair and square in the Electoral College. That’s the only thing that mattered.

As powerful a weapon as righteous indignation can be, it’s a double-edge sword. 

Two can play the righteous indignation game, in other words. And you can carry righteous indignation too far; then it can become a weapon for the other side.  

Democrats and the media viciously smeared Brett Kavanaugh with false charges of decades-old sexual misconduct, hoping to inflame righteous indignation among women. This backfired when Kavanaugh refuted all their claims and responded with his own righteous indignation at their attempts to destroy him and his family merely to settle political scores.  

When Democrats and the media perpetuated the Russia collusion hoax nonstop for two and a half years, calling Trump a traitor who would be forced from office by the Mueller report, they were caught off guard when the Mueller report found no evidence of collusion.  

Now, spurred by righteous indignation over the reported abuses of Mueller’s team – and the FBI and other intelligence agencies – the pendulum may be swinging the other way.  Senate and House Republicans, AG Barr, the DOJ’s Inspector General, and an experienced prosecutor in Connecticut, are on the path to exposing those responsible for starting the hoax. 

The result may be that some former and current high-ranking officials will be indicted.     

Fortunately, righteous indignation does have a life cycle. It needs to be constantly fed or the public eventually tires of it.  When you run out of new things to feed it, it slowly withers. 

Democrats and the media don’t realize it, but the signs are already starting.  If they keep going, the righteous indignation they crave to maintain will shift to the other side; their villains – such as Trump and AG Barr – will become victims of injustice in the eyes of many. 

And their current heroes – such as Comey, McCabe, Cohen, Clapper, Brennan, and Mueller – will become the villains.

Such is the nature of righteous indignation carried too far.