There is a great deal of anger in America today, and it is a multidimensional anger…a neo-Hobbesian war of group against group, with the boundaries of the groups and the axes of their hostilities shifting constantly. I am reminded for the lyrics to Leonard Cohen’s song There is a War.
And while much of the anger is politically-motivated, not all of it is. There are political assassination attempts…and approval for such attempts…but there are also incidents of very bad behavior on airliners and other public conveyances, and snarly interactions between customers and representatives of businesses…with the snarling sometimes on both sides.
Of course, there has always been a lot of anger–probably characteristic of all societies, certainly the case in American society. In the 1850s, a Senator was brutally caned by another Senator on the senate floor. Lynch mobs existed. There were insane attacks against German-Americans and all things German during WWI, in a toxic climate that had been established by Woodrow Wilson. And some of the same against Japanese Americans during WWII. But what is unique about present-day anger is both its multidimensional nature and its pervasiveness.
What are the reasons for all this anger?…what will be the consequences if it is not damped down?…and can it be damped down?
The first thing that will surely come to almost everybody’s mind as a reason is social media…and, particularly, the algorithms that encourage negative rather than positive interaction. There is some truth in this, but it’s too easy to treat it as the exclusive cause. Cable media is at least as bad, though cable news viewership seems fortunately to be on the decline.
Some of it is career and economic disappointment. There are strong feelings on the part of many college graduates that they did what they were supposed to do, and ‘society’ did not hold up its part of the bargain by providing them with the kinds of careers and incomes that they expected. And non-college graduates often feel disrespected as well an unfairly limited in their careers.
A friend once remarked that “if someone is bitter, then he is publicly announcing that in his own eyes he is a failure.” I thought this was a profound comment, and by that measure, there are a lot of people in America today who consider themselves to be failures–too often not leading them to seriously consider how they can do better, but rather toward envy and resentment toward others.
There is an expectation of perfection which leads to a continual sense of disappointment. For example: after the recent NYC helicopter crash, comments were flooded with accusations against the helicopter designers–‘how could anyone possibly design something that can fail like this?’ But things aren’t ever going to be perfect, and thus, there will always be something to be angry about. I’ve read that there are tribal societies that believe that nothing bad ever happens except through witchcraft…if someone gets sick or dies, well, bad things don’t just happen, he must have been witched. There is an unwholesome amount of this kind of thinking in America today.
The above is related to the myth of a golden age. I’ve seen many people asserting that there was some golden age in which Americans were naturally healthy, before we were poisoned by Big Food and Big Pharma. No historical memory of the infectious diseases that killed so many children before the age of 5, or the fact that women faced serious risk of dying in childbirth, or of a thousand not-so-healthy things. Of course, we should address problems with food and pharmaceuticals, but this doesn’t justify a denial of everything positive that has been done and from which we have benefitted. See Ruxandra Teslo on why she is glad she wasn’t born a century or two ago. See also the trend chart of words reflecting progress and future versus caution, worry, and risk-aversion–in English, French, and German–over the past four centuries at this Ruxandra post.
Indeed, the whole idea that people in earlier times have done things from which we have benefitted has been lost, even negated. We suffer from a malign form of negative ancestor-worship.
A huge factor is the focus on identity established through demographically–defined groups, identities usually emphasized for politically-tendentious reasons. I’m reminded of something Ralph Peters said:
Man loves, men hate. While individual men and women can sustain feelings of love over a lifetime toward a parent or through decades toward a spouse, no significant group in human history has sustained an emotion that could honestly be characterized as love. Groups hate. And they hate well…Love is an introspective emotion, while hate is easily extroverted…We refuse to believe that the “civilized peoples of the Balkans could slaughter each other over an event that occurred over six hundred years ago. But they do. Hatred does not need a reason, only an excuse.
Also see @alexthechick on Tribalism.
Roger Simon argues that a primary cause of the outpouring of anger is the decline of religion. Maybe to some extent, but I’m pretty sure that lynch mobs included a substantial complement of believing, church-going people; the hanging of witches certainly did. The decline of formal religion, though, does contribute to the increase in the number of isolated, disconnected individuals.
A lot of people are looking for a source of identity, and while some of this traditionally came from religion, much of it came from family, which has clearly had a declining influence. There’s an ad for a matchmaking service that’s recently been on tv a lot, in which a woman expresses her disappointment with online dating services and says she “just wants to meet someone she can introduce to her friends.” I thought this was interesting: a few decades ago, it would have been “someone she could introduce to her parents.”
There are a lot of people who get their incomes from stirring up anger. This includes not only political operators, and online influencers, but a large number of NGOs which are largely about attacking some set of organizations and/or people. And a significant part of American academia is endlessly busy manufacturing new and revised group identities, and stirring up resentments based thereon.
Rob Henderson says, speaking of much of today’s political rhetoric “Notice it’s always “smash the system” and “demolish capitalism” and “eat the rich.” It’s never “help the needy” or “feed the poor.” You’ll see a thousand communists say “billionaires shouldn’t exist” but not a single one who says “poor people shouldn’t exist.”
The politicization of absolutely everything is certainly a major factor in the metastasization of anger in our society. As I remarked in this post:
One reason why American political dialog has become so unpleasant is that increasingly, everything is a political issue. Matters that are life-and-death to individuals…metaphorically life-and-death, to his financial future or the way he wants to live his life, or quite literally life-and-death…are increasingly grist for the political mill. And where that takes us is that:
People who disagree with your agenda are “attacking” you or “robbing” you. How commonly do you hear dissent described in precisely those terms nowadays?
When the government controls everything, there is no constructive relief valve for all this pent-up tension. It all boils down to a “historic” election once every couple of years, upon whose outcome everything depends. They’re all going to be “historic” elections from now on. That’s not a good thing. (link)
The post by Dragonfly Girl reminded me of a post by Grim, in which he discussed anger in a political context, and channeled Andrew Klavan to point out that anger can make you stupid.
Grim: We need to be cunning. We need to think and act strategically.
Klavan: You want to win back your country? Here’s how. Fear nothing. Hate no one. Stick to principles. Unchecked borders are dangerous not because Mexicans are evil but because evil thrives when good men don’t stand guard. Poverty programs are misguided, not because the poor are undeserving criminals, but because dependency on government breeds dysfunction and more poverty. Guns save lives and protect liberty. Property rights guarantee liberty. Religious rights are essential to liberty. Without liberty we are equal only in misery.
Anger of course does have a purpose. In politics, it is anger at bad policies and their destructive impact that can motivate one to get involved and work hard for positive change. In relationships, anger at mistreatment can motivate one to fix it or get out of it. But anger needs to be controlled and moderated or it becomes the enemy of judicious thought and effective action.
One of the reasons for the French loss in the campaign of 1940 was the internal angers and resentments which existed in French society at the time.
Another excellent example of the effects of uncontrolled anger can be found in that piece of military history known as the Charge of the Light Brigade. This unnecessary disaster took place during the Crimean War, in 1854, and seems to have been driven in considerable part by toxic emotions on the part of British officers involved. While the details of the Charge are still being debated by historians, 161 years later, the general outline was as follows…
The Light Cavalry Brigade was commanded by Lord Cardigan, who in turn was subordinate to the overall Cavalry commander, Lord Lucan. The two men were related, and they could not stand each other, to the point where they avoided communication. Neither was popular in the army.
On October 25, the overall British commander in the Crimea, Lord Raglan, was situated on high ground, from which he had a far better view of the field than did Cardigan and Lucan. He and his staff observed that the Russians had captured some heavy British guns and were about to haul them away. An order was dispatched to Lucan under the signature of Raglan’s chief of staff:
Lord Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front – follow the enemy and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Troop Horse Artillery may accompany. French cavalry is on your left. R Airey. Immediate.
The order was handed to Captain Louis Nolan, a superb horseman who was sure to deliver it as rapidly as possible. In addition to his equestrian skills, Nolan was an experienced military professional who had devoted considerable thought to cavalry tactics and written books on the subject. He believed the cavalry was being mishandled in the Crimean campaign and he viewed Cardigan and Lucan as men who lacked military professionalism and held their positions only because of their inherited social status. Nolan had also served in India, and the snob Cardigan was highly prejudiced against officers with that background, believing they lacked the social graces and elegance of attire which were important to him. (Indeed, on one occasion Cardigan had persecuted Nolan for ordering what he believed to be a socially-unacceptable kind of wine.)
As Nolan galloped away, Raglan called after him, “Tell Lord Lucan the cavalry is to attack immediately.” Nolan sent his horse diving down the hill and quickly reached the place where the cavalry was stationed.
“Lord Raglan’s orders,” Nolan told Lucan, “are that the cavalry should attack immediately.” His tone of voice can only be guessed at, but it is said that he was “already mad with anger”…at Lucan, at Cardigan, and at the whole British command structure and what he believed to be their incompetence.
“Attack, sir! Attack what? What guns, sir? Where and what to do?”
“There, my Lord! There is your enemy! There are your guns!” Nolan snapped back, waving his arm in a gesture “more of rage than of indication.”
Lucan could not see the British guns which were being hauled away; the only guns in sight were the Russian battery at the far end of the North valley, where Russian cavalry was also stationed. Certainly Nolan’s “impertinent and flamboyant” gesture had seemed to point in that direction. Lucan trotted over and passed on the order to Cardigan, who, “coldly polite,” dropped his sword in salute.
“Certainly, sir,” Cardigan responded. “But allow me to point out to you that the Russians have a battery in the valley on our front, and riflemen and batteries on each flank.”
“I know it,” replied Lucan. “But Lord Raglan will have it. We have no choice but to obey.”
Raglan and his staff, and the French allies, watched in horror as the beautifully-uniformed Light Brigade, which they had expected to turn in the direction of the captured guns, headed straight down the valley into the jaws of the main Russian battery position. Nolan, who had chosen to ride with the brigade, cut across in front of the commander, Cardigan, waving his sword and shouting something–he could not be heard because of the boom of the Russian guns, but almost certainly he was trying to warn Cardigan that he was going the wrong way. One of the first shells to be fired killed him (Nolan) in the saddle. Breaking into a gallop, the Brigade continued toward the Russian position, now under fire from three sides.
The Light Brigade did reach the Russian battery and kill most of the Russian gunners; the military value of this is questionable. When what was left of the Brigade returned to its starting point, 156 of its members had been killed or were missing, and 122 were wounded. 335 horses had been killed or mortally wounded.
“It is a mad-brained trick,” said Cardigan to a group of survivors, “But it is no fault of mine.”
So, what happened here? In part, the debacle was caused by technical/intellectual failings…Airey’s order could have been clearer, pointing out the direction of the designated target, which he knew Lucan and Cardigan could not see. But the main cause of the disaster, I think, was emotional. If Nolan had been able to contain his (apparently quite justified) anger at Lucan and Cardigan, and to coolly point out the direction of the target, then Raglan’s original order would surely have been carried out as intended. If Lucan and Cardigan had not disliked one another so strongly, they might have been able to discuss the order for a moment and recognize that their interpretation of it didn’t make any sense–the guns they had interpreted as their assigned target were not being “carried away.” And after the Charge had already begun, if Cardigan had been able to keep his fury at Nolan under control (he thought Nolan’s crossing in front of him meant the Nolan was trying to take command of the Brigade), he might have recognized that he needed to change directions. (In the event, Cardigan’s mind was possessed with rage at Nolan both during the charge and the return.)
When I cited the above example back in 2015, I said: “It is disturbing to think that the relationship among much of the American leadership today is just about as toxic as the relationships that existed among Lucan, Cardigan, and Nolan.” It hasn’t become any less toxic the intervening ten years, and it seems to me that the angers and resentments have penetrated considerably more broadly and deeply into American society.
What is your own view of the extent of anger within today’s America? (Comparison with other countries also of interest.) Am I overstating things–or understating them? Are there any signs of improvement, or is the problem just getting worse and worse? What, if anything, can be done to help address the situation?
And that’s, at least in part, because their opponents would immediately seize on the quote and talk about how they wanted to kill the poor. Which rather ties into the point about anger and not giving the target of that anger any benefit of the doubt.
That this flies in the face of communist ideals is irrelevant; everybody knows the communist intelligentsia has little use for the actual poor because despite everything the poor tend to have better things to do than revolt, like keeping themselves and their families fed. Organizing a revolution requires disposable income.
The reason politics is bitter and intense is that everything is at stake. There is no aspect of our lives where the government is not the most important factor. Business, education, housing, what car you can drive (if you are still allowed!), what you can say on social media, health care. The policy and even the approval of government decides whether businesses win or lose, what your chlidren learn, whether you can build anything anywhere ever. On and on.
This must stop.
The govt is too big, too intrusive, spends too much.
The govt schools teach lies and encourage tribal behavior.
The business incentives of networked communication, esp social media, perversely reinforce the dissemination of inflammatory lies and encourage the fostering of hatreds and tribal behavior.
Have I left anything out?
Timely. That last bit about France 1940 comes just as I am rereading the classic To Lose a Battle by Alistair Horne.
Hanging witches: King James VI & I advocated that. Later in life he changed his mind: he decided that the women were mad, not bad. He set up a research project at Cambridge to investigate their delusions.
Maybe the US needs an investigation of the delusions that inspire so much bad feeling – open borders, Global Boiling, DEI, transistor people, mandatory Covid jabs, lockdowns, …
But I expect there is no one in any US university who could carry out such an investigation and be recognised as being even-handed.
dearieme…transistor people?
Transistor . . . . I like it.
I think I agree with Dragonfly Tattoo Girl and Grim.
Expressing your anger is off-putting for most people in the vicinity. Look at the Columbia/Harvard/Yale protestors. Do they really think they’re convincing anyone? No, they’re just performing their anger, likely chanting until something flares and there’s violence to be done.
Even in regular life, people still tend to view anger expressed in public as poor taste. The clerk screamed at by a customer inevitably gets sympathy from the next person in line. Someone going over the edge at a football game puts their job on the line, like that dude in Philly who crossed the line with some Packer fans.
Expressing your anger is self-indulgent, and when you’re surrounded by other self-indulgent people, they’ll be upset that the attention is off them.
As for Grim, “cunning” is the subtle expression of anger. January 6 was nowhere near an insurrection, but lefties get concerned when the Right expresses its anger. That’s ridiculously hypocritical, of course, because they give themselves full license to be angry. But the Right did learn from what happened. Behave in public. That’s made easy at Trump rallies, because they’re such positive experiences, but it is important for the Right’s anger to be muted. I guarantee if you ask most conservatives, “What’s your plan if things go sideways?” you will get some form of answer, depending on whether or not we have to fight for our freedom or just survive.
In a parallel vein, we on the Right generally are happier people. We know that obstacles can be overcome, troubles are transitory. All through the calamity of Biden’s presidency, I just kept living, hoping things got better, ready to vote for any Republican as a bulwark against what was happening. As a middle-aged white man, I’m mostly invisible, so I do what I like. You might not see it in my face, but I’m a happy person.
And that’s just what the left hates. I’m happy to oblige their ranting with my serenity.
the Delta house jamboree, thats how I see Jan 6th, except there were some instances like Michael Byrd, in which participants acted like Niedermeyer, look at the Tesla targeted terrorism which apparently is not being prosecuted in Blue Bergs, as with the Summer of Fire,
that we saw in 2020 (which I suggest was an orchestrated insurgency cooked up by the usual players, these are pin pricks in the big scheme of things, but our foreign adversaries have seen our response times to these events, as well as the rash of aircraft related incidents that have popped up of late, it wouldn’t be too hard for them to replicate these incidents in larger frequency,
The above is related to the myth of a golden age.
My version of a golden age was when the US government pulled the swine flu vaccine from the market after a few dozen people died from it. Today’s government forced millions of people to take a not-vaccine to remain employed, killing or maiming a huge number of us, and it worked hard to wreck the lives of people who refused. I would also note that the same government was busy flying large numbers of unvetted foreigners into the country, re-introducing various diseases, and its judges are presently attempting to prevent the deportation of foreign criminals back to their country of origin.
I just don’t think it’s a high bar to expect the government to not force me to take experimental medical treatments and not try to get me killed by foreign criminals.
What is your own view of the extent of anger within today’s America?
One side of the political aisle has spent my entire life striving to whip its supporters into a deranged frenzy. It needs to, because to pick one example not many people would be particularly upset that well-liked real estate magnate and ex-Democrat Donald Trump was running for President. But if you can convince them that he is yet another Hitler who must be opposed at all hazards, then you might have a chance to continue your insane plans to fundamentally transform the United States into whatever.
This dynamic isn’t going to end until one side or the other is completely and utterly defeated, by whatever means necessary.
David, this is insightful about a societal defect, and I think it’s relatively new. Case in point: Our HOA this week banned all news channels in our gym. TVs are always on silent mode so nothing to offend the earshot . Fights have broken out over anger from the news. Really. People are nuts, intolerant, and self righteous. So now we suffer with the weather channel, the travel channel, and the food channel. Our board of directors is spineless how to resolve.
Anger tends to be an emotion on an continuum with passion. When it comes to “anger” how would someone categorize Jan. 6? Tens of thousands of people showed up for Trump’s speech and whatever you want to say about the later events not all of them entered the Capitol, let alone ventured beyond the velvet ropes.
We use “anger” as an epithet and passion as a positive, nobody uses the term “passion management”, but the passion needed to attend to go confront your school board over teaching CRT or or letting teenage r*pists roam your schools. The media called the parents protesting at the Loudoun County School Board meeting in 2021 “angry” though the only person arrested was the father of the girl who was assaulted and then he was cuffed for more or less disturbing the process. Compare and contrast that with the pro-Hamas idiots on campus who engage in much more for a cause thousands of miles of which they know virtually nothing
I also seem to remember a passage from the Book of Matthew about Jesus chasing out the sinful riffraff from the Temple. He seemed somewhat angry (or if you like passionate about it) Precision is needed
We do have a decline in public virtue to the point where “I’m mad and I’m not going to take it any more” is seen as acceptable, even celebrated. That’s how you end up with the Columbia U. protesters or those cause thousands of dollars of damages for vandalizing for people’s Teslas let off without prosecution.
We are the descendants of revolutionaries. We like to think of the noble stoicism of Washington and the intellectualism of Jefferson, but there was something more than passion involved in the Boston tea Party or the yeomen farmers who ran to get their guns to snipe out the British retreating from Concord. Context matters, to claim to revolution while may be reduced to each individual’s choice it and righteous anger must appeal to a higher virtue.
The American Revolution is often contrasted with its contemporary in France. We forget that the American was in fact a counter-revolution, done to protest those rights already exercised by American colonists in the face of British tyranny and independence was declared in or to create a new form of government in order to better secure it. It would seem to me that “anger”, on how you define it, is not only justified but should have been expected.
Compare that to today.
While we officially maintain the same constitutional order that we had 100 years ago, it is in fact been hollowed out through Progressivism to the point where natural rights and the social contract is no longer supported by a large percentage and most of those who claim to be the governing class.
To our friends, Vichy Conservatives, at places like The National Review, it will take more than pretty words to restore the Republic just as it took more than pretty words to make our Independence a reality or to save the Republic in 1861. To those buffoons I offer my service as a DC tour guide where will go from the monument to man who led an army in rebellion against the British Crown, through a Memorial to the greatest war machine ever created that killed millions of civilians to save the world from fascism, and end up at the memorial to the president who saved the Republic by fighting the deadliest war in American history.
To those who point to Lincoln as a statesman and to his eloquence I agree. However when I am in DC I go to the Lincoln Memorial to read the Gettysburg Address inscribed on the north wall and especially the lines that link the war and the sacrifice to save the Republic to the honored dead (t is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation,) There is a direct link between the nobility expressed in the Gettysburg Address and Sheridan’s The Burning in the Shenandoah in 1864.
To the divisions in France in 1940 I say so what? France was very divided before WW I and that rot was simply several decades further advanced by 1940. There is a reason why France has had five different republic, an empire or two, and the restoration of Bourbons. Should France, Sweden, and all the rest simply slide into abyss instead of being angry? That’s a question they are stating to ask, perhaps too late, right now. That was the question we asked in 1775.
I am a bit of a Stoic these days who believes that anger is destructive to the social and personal order. However as a child and literal descendant of the Revolution fought in the defense of my natural rights I am faced with the perpetual question of when the emergency has reached the point where it’s time to “break the glass.”
where do these notions come from,
https://escapekey.substack.com/p/systems-of-deception?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2czur&triedRedirect=true
some interesting places,
The proliferation of anger is related to the propaganda tactic that was recommended by Stalin’s master propagandist, Willi Munzenberg: Denounce and intimidate, do not debate and seek to persuade.
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/63567.html
The escalation of violent rhetoric. At first people would think they’re just blowing off steam. In the 1940’s-1950’s literature you can see references to AYM (angry young men) along with the expectation that they would grow out of it. Instead of going away, the rhetoric has increased. I also wonder about the unrealistic expectations brought about by the “You can have it all” advertisements. See James 4:1-4.