Masha Gessen Is Worried About Outrage Fatigue

“Civil society fatigue” is not the same as “outrage fatigue.” The latter is associated with identity-politics, like asking someone covering RUSSIAN TOTALITARIANISM who her favorite “queer mentors” are. It reduces her to GLBT activist when the fight is much, much bigger. Also, Ms. Gessen’s sympathy for postmodernism is deeply upsetting. The left’s War on Science is as responsible for the mess we’re in as the rise of the alt-right. There is ONE reality. It is not the bizarro reality of Breitbart and it is not the performative reality of every “special snowflake” (I hate that phrase but it’s apt) fluent in Orwellian transgenderese. Honestly, the re-emergence of liberation-era “queer” activism coupled with the rise of Third Wave Feminism has provoked in me a feeling of existential dread about the plight of gay people I had not experienced since coming out during high school in the early 2000s. I hope Ms. Gessen realizes this is now a war with two fronts.

I share Gessen's concern. Trump's allies defend him against his mental illness and that is doing him a grievous disservice They plan to ride it out and tell lies even thought his erratic incoherent behavior is absolutely indefensible. They are doing it, not for his sake, but for THEIR sake: their pride and their pockets. They are counting on the public's fading interest in Trump's wacky behavior, so to save their scalps. But I for one will not go away and most of us wont. For me Trump is a pitiable figure, senile enough to brag about a genius that, if it ever was, has decayed with his frontal lobes. He needs medical help and badly. Time will prove that and soon.

The problem I see is Masha Gessen fatigue...but that's just me.

More Masha!

I don't remember who said it, but when there sayong about spontaneous movements created by a crisis "people do more than they ever have before, or will ever do again." This is not "outrage fatigue", it is a part of the process of social change. Professional activists whose lives are dedicated to their cause forget that most people's lives aren't. Trump got elected because he is a very good celebrity who knows what his fans want and what the media needs to hold their interest as an audience for advertisers. Trump is going to be President for three more years. We need to figure out how to keep people engaged around real issues, instead of a soap opera of weird Russian conspiracy theories, bombastic nonsense and emotional disgust. Its time for anti-Trump hysteria to end and to start engaging people in practical sustainable activities that place limits on the damage he does and build a movement to replace him with people who will fix the damage what we can't prevent.

Well, the photo fooled me completely. I thought this reporter was a male and then, I read first name again. So, that was a startle. This "talk" opens with her Putin book. But then, the whole talk is about the POTUS - and with this woman living in Moscow. Do we have to be bombarded in every article about their opinions of the POTUS. And her comments about that woman who had that Oscar envelope moment in November 2016 - about being tough on Putin - hardly a journalist speaking based on research - just an opinion. Any wonder that POTUS and his supporters keep screaming "fake news." I am dreaming of time in a few years when this POTUS is mentioned not once in a daily edition of the NYT.

I just finished Gessen's book "The Future Is History" and there is no doubt Putin is totalitarian. Trump to me mirrors some of the same tendencies as Putin and Erdogan.

It's been a long, bumpy ride to get to where we are and there are no indications that it will end soon or well. Americans are suffering from what I would describe as Fat and Happy Syndrome, regrettably, we have the fat part down but not the happy part. Nobody is taking to the streets, people circle parking lots in their cars to find the space that requires the least amount of walking. Complaining, blaming and looking for the easy way out, all facilitated by narrow political interests, have become the new 'normal'. We have become Dorian Grays with false appearances promulgated on-line while the true pictures are relegated to the attics of our consciences. What it will take to shake people out of their complacency is not clear in this moment, not enough people, certainly any with agency, have experienced hardship in our society but why are people across so many walks of life, especially the most vocal, coming across as unhappy? It does not jibe with the mythos of the U.S. being the richest, most powerful country in the world. "It's the economy stupid" is a simplistic slogan not without it's usefulness, unfortunately neo-liberalism is past its expire date and new methods are required. New leadership is needed and not from the ranks of the comfortable and connected. That in itself would be a revolution, possibly forestalling ones of a violent nature. Those have a poor track record in my living memory. The future belongs to the young, time for us old folks to get out of the way.

If Trump admires Putin as much as he proclaims, I believe that Trump would let Putin tell him what he himself would do in Trumps situation, Trump is consistent in that trust, calls Putin regularily, so it's not too hard to imagine that Trump is being instructed in how to be an autocrat from the master, Putin. Putin wants a puppet like Trump who would keep America off his radar, create chaos so that Putin could do what he wants in Europe. As described in Masha Gessen book, 'Man Without a Face', Putin an old KGB operative wants to recreate USSR, reclaiming all of the land once belonging to the union, a real player to compete with other giant trade collaborators i.e. European Union, etc. there is nothing Putin will not do to achieve his goals, including conspiracy in another country's election....

I have always admired Masha's insights and writing skills, but believe that she needs to return to the basic journalistic driver and narrative to wit: What are Putin's goals here, really? As always, they are existential, and toward that end, Putin need to solve the problem of cheap oil and energy. Russia turns a profit and gains moral maneuverability with oil at $100 + PPB. Right now its 30% off its mark. To really clean up and have leverage to spare, oil would be at $150 a barrel as it was as recently as four or so years back. But the market dynamics have changed due to fracking and natural gas. Putin has tried disruption (Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and other prevarications). The production and competition for capital among OPEC producers is just too great, and Russia's interests are divergent from most of OPEC's. Putin's strange bedfellow in the Middle East has been Israel, whether either wants to admit this or not, they share a desire for similar course of events in the Middle East, even though they desire divergent outcomes. Gessen's responses have been edited somewhat more than I am betting she would have preferred. Trump is like a really stupid dog, he will do things trying to please Putin that will only cause vexation and annoyance. Putin needs war between Iran and Saudi - That would seriously disrupt and interrupt oil flow, transport and futures pricing while providing a credible disclaimer to Russia for being the one to blame.

Outrage fatigue, opposition fatigue, politics fatigue, or any other fatigue.....that's the name of trump's game. It's relatively difficult to steamroller opposition legislatively, but fatigue is trump's name of the game when it comes to his executive actions; the more overwhelming their numbers, the more difficult it is to mount effective opposition.

"I don’t think that Donald Trump is capable of holding a thought for more than three seconds, so how can we possibly imagine that he actually had some sort of sustained relationship that had an articulated strategy behind it?" Articulated strategy? No. Fear of what Putin could reveal about him? Yes. Ms Gessen's deep knowledge of Russian corrupt politics cannot be easily extrapolated to the US (less) corrupt politics, for the simple reason that the rule of law is still solidly entrenched in US culture and that it would take much more than a mentally deficient president and a bunch of billionaires to transform it into a full-fledged Mafia State.

"The postmodern project was to get a better understanding of facts by questioning whether we can have them. Now we’re confronted with a nihilistic project of just saying there’s no such thing as facts." Not to sound too simple-minded -- I am in sympathy with the postmodern project -- there are facts and there are facts. When discussing, say, Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Elizabeth I and Napoleon, unexamined tenets of reality can have significant implications for our understanding of history. By contrast, I see no reason to assume that issues of race or gender arise when a Federal agency is called on to decide whether lead or arsenic levels in water are hazardous to human health. Questioning core assumptions is sensible, while the Trump project is simply to discard whatever one dislikes, facts be damned.

"I don’t think that Donald Trump is capable of holding a thought for more than three seconds" This is just not correct. And we collectively need to stop thinking he is mentally deficient or incompetent. He is his own style, which obviously does not measure up to what WE think he should be in terms of honor and ethics and things WE hold dear. But he is consistently and relentlessly targeting all the things his deplorables (meaning wealthy profiteers and bigots) want him to target. Systematically. Effectively dismantling decades of policy, infrastructure and implementation. He just fired the whole HIV/AIDS council, for instance, because of course that plays to his religious extremists. He is bleeding out the FBI, systematically, as we speak, completely able to keep relentlessly focused on that. Trump effectively USES his clownish behavior to distract. He is HAPPY to be thought the fool by us elites. The sooner we learn this the sooner we will understand what a dangerous thing he is. He has unleashed a radical undermining of the republic and there is no reason to think he can be stopped. Mainly because we are sitting on our butts. If we were France or Germany we would be massively out in the streets fighting. But we are lazy, watching this thing tear us apart.

There will be NO evidence of collusion as collusion is not a legal term and not a crime. The use of 'collusion' adds to the confusion, which is why Trump uses the word so much.