A sad, outrageous fact: We've gotten hooked – on outrage

Addiction is the story of 2017.

Not addiction to opioids, though of course tens of thousands of families are mourning the death of a loved one to fentanyl or heroin or some other variant of the scourge coursing through the United States.

Not addiction to the toxic combination of power and lust that has metastasized for so many decades and burst onto the public stage in so many places, with the name Harvey Weinstein now synonymous with a sociopathic need to dominate, humiliate and exploit for a twisted set of pseudo pleasures.

And no, not an addiction to President Donald Trump, either on the part of his adoring legions or his self-anointed "worst enemies," whose ritual condemnations of Trump seem just as calculated to oblige notice of the virtue of the condemners themselves as the president's tweets are to bring the collective gaze back to him and his agendas, both personal and political.

No, the centerpiece addiction of this year, widespread and growing, is to outrage itself — to the state of being perpetually offended, to the need not only to be angry at someone or something, or many people and issues, but also to always and everywhere be, well, hating.

We are all trapped in this ongoing carnival of venom, a national gathering of unpleasant souls like that assembled in C.S. Lewis' 1959 essay "Screwtape Proposes a Toast" in the Saturday Evening Post (written two decades after Lewis' famed "Screwtape Letters"). Google and read it. It is remarkably resonant with our times.

This outrage isn't a current that is always on full strength, like Boston's Citgo sign. But it never quite turns off either, as once upon a time the television stations did with a ritual playing of the national anthem. (Quaint, especially this year.)

This may be the fault of Silicon Valley's algorithms, which provide us with near-constant friendly echoes of what we already believe and a steady stream of bias-confirming stories from bias-bent sources that further bend our biases along the arc they were already traveling (and it isn't, believe me, some preordained arc of history).

All very convenient, these self-congratulatory seances with the unseen millions who agree with us about our own particular outrage.

Wait a bit after this column posts online, then check the comments. It will be a cut and paste of every other comment section of every other column, left, right and center. Just as cable news talking heads are beginning to blur into one long declarative sentence of certainty surrounded by nodding heads.

The amplification of the incendiary and the extreme in the comments section has broken through into podcasts and some into talk radio, cable and network news. Outrage is the kudzu of all media platforms. It will cover us all completely soon enough.

Like some undiscovered Mayan temple covered over by dense jungle, we will eventually all be a blip of angry noise picked up in a galaxy far, far away.

Of course, we do. But you'd never know it from the majority of media — broadcast, print, social and all. The kudzu spreads faster and faster, and it seems we can't do business without it. Its launch year was 2017.

An early New Year's resolution to throw the trend into reverse would be a start — as well as a good, long look in the mirror.