Demands for investigations? Impeachment? Counter-demands for an investigation? For what? Jonathan Turley raises a study about moral outrage, perhaps the foremost weapon of our age as it justifies the mindless devolution into emotion without all that annoying baggage of knowledge and facts.

As our politicians went on the air to vent their disgust over Russians trying to influence our election, there was an interesting study published this month on moral outrage in an academic journal, Motivation and Emotion.  The researchers found that moral outrage is rooted, not in altruism, but self-interest — often to affirm one’s own status and avoiding responsibilities or guilt.

“Individuals,” the study notes, “respond to reminders of their group’s moral culpability with feelings of outrage at third-party harm-doing.”  The most astonishing aspect of this study is that it was not done entirely on Capitol Hill.

Well, that sucks, since all the deeply passionate social justice seekers sleep better at night knowing their true purpose is the betterment of humanity, and not just affirming their own status as social justice warriors. But that doesn’t mean the moral outrage, embraced for less than altruistic reasons, isn’t justified, right?

Many other countries can be forgiven if they are a bit confused by the expressions of outrage at the notion that Russia hacked emails or tried to influence our election.  The United States objecting to hacking or influencing elections is akin to Bernie Sanders expressing disgust over accounting irregularities.

The United States has not only extensively engaged in surveillance in other countries but hacked the accounts of our closest allies, including the personal communications of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.  Moreover, our country has a long history of direct interference in foreign elections from overthrowing governments to funding opposition movements.

One study found 81 different instances of the United States interfering with the elections of other countries between 1946 and 2000.

So they do it. We do it. We do it more and better (or worse, as the case may be), but that’s entirely different because we’re the good guys and they’re the Ruskies. This might sound a bit nationalistic but, oh crap. But did the Russians really change the course of American politics, ruin our election and put their sleeper agent in the oval office?

Democratic leadership have a particular interest in expressing moral outrage over the election. The extent to which the election becomes an example of “third-party harm-doing,” the less attention will be drawn toward the party establishment which virtually anointed Hillary Clinton as their candidate despite polls showing that voters wanted someone outside of the establishment.

Not only did they select the single greatest establishment figure, but someone with record negative polling.  “The Russians did it” is a much better narrative.

It must have been the Russians, since it couldn’t possibly be that half the country refused to vote for Hillary, and that half Hillary’s voters didn’t vote for her but against Darth Cheeto.

Of course, the Russians did not “hack the election.”  No votes were fabricated. Indeed, there is no proof of emails being fabricated (despite the claims of some Democratic leaders like Donna Brazile at the time).  The reason the public has not risen up in anger is that it is hard to get the public outraged over being shown the duplicitous and dishonest character of their leaders — even if the release was clearly one-sided against Democrats.

The public has every right to be outraged, but the outrage of our government officials would make Claude Reins blush.

Putting the expressions of moral outrage in context, we’re left with reasons to be furious, but a problematic lack of clarity as to what we’re to be furious about, other than the fact that Donald Trump won the election and he’s horrible. This is where the screams for action come into play, ranging from investigation of connections between Trump and those involved in his campaign, from Flynn to Sessions, and the Russians, to the more extreme calls for his impeachment for the high crime and misdemeanor of being “literally Hitler.”

Moral outrage in search of a crime

In the end, Russian attempts to influence our election should be a matter of national concern and investigation, though we would be in a far superior position if we acknowledged our own checkered past in such efforts.  However, the call for a “Special Counsel” or “independent prosecutor” seems a bit premature since we do not have a clear crime other than the hacking itself (which has already been confirmed).

Hard as it may be to swallow when every fiber of your altruistic being cries out for someone to do something about those horrible people is that there really isn’t much to investigate, provided you don’t have your eyes shut tight and your fingers in your ears. The Russians hacked the DNC? Okay. So? Sessions gave disingenuous testimony to the Senate about meetings with the Russian ambassador, which might have proven perjurious if comedy writer Al Franken knew how to ask a cross-examination question. But he’s didn’t.

So what’s to investigate?

Yet, we are simply likely to confirm much of what we know: we were hacked.  We are also likely to confront what many do not want to discuss: we have hacked others for years.

Until there is more evidence of a crime by United States citizens, there is little reason for a special counsel as opposed to the current investigations.  We should investigate the hacking and efforts to influence our elections, certainly. But our politicians may want to leave the moral outrage and hypocrisy behind.

Add to the mix the latest, and most bizarre, claims by Trump that Obama tapped his “wires,” which bears the stink of a preemptive defense, to be included in any investigation so that the waters are so inexplicably muddied with unsupported, wild accusations that there’s something for every blithering idiot in America to be outraged about and no one will be left out of the moral outrage party.

Can we undo, or at least slow down, the obsessive enjoyment of moral outrage that is reducing political discourse to Trumpian depths? If not, win or lose, guess who wins. So is feeding your need for moral outrage enough to sate your need for validation, or is there anything real that actually matters to you?