The Sub-Culture of Easy Offence

There seems to be a vein of the American culture that takes offence very easily.  It is a trait that a lot of people in the public eye and media have.  It is also a mellow drama that a lot of people can be easily pulled into watching, following and feeling sympathy for. 

These days you can very easily offend by simply not using the right word or formulation of words.  If you don’t choose your words carefully, your reputation, your actual thoughts and your actual intentions cannot save you from ridicule and accusations of some sort of bigotry: racism, islamophobia, etc.  Very rarely is some asked to explain themselves; it is simply demanded that they apologize and say they were wrong.  Even then, they will be looked at suspiciously for a while and every word is analyzed to see if they really were apologetic and felt that they were wrong, or if they just apologized to get out of trouble and didn’t really mean it.  It is a public trial by media to determine if they are prejudice or stupid, and they only get to answer for themselves on the media’s terms: soundbites, yes/no answers, and always the potential of comments being taken out of context.  They are often viewed as guilty until the media and the public tire of perusing them, or until someone else comes along who is more entertaining or outrageous in how they offend. 

In this environment there is no room for partial support. There is no room for those that hesitate to either fully deny or fully support something that has been deemed urgent and important by the talking heads.  As a result there is little to no room for thoughtfulness or exploration of an issue or idea.  There is little to no room for compromise either.  This, along with other things like memes and soundbites, is contributing to the degradation of public debate and public trust.