Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Anger’s appeal: It just feels so good

Anger is so in now. It may be one of the Seven Deadly Sins, but wrath is all the rage. Blame the Tea Party and its deep sense of entitled grievance if you must — and I, for one, must — but hasn’t it gotten bigger than that?

A few weeks ago, when Bill Clinton visited town to stump, probably in vain, for Rory Reid’s gubernatorial campaign, he talked quite a bit about the nation’s angry mood. (An emotion he’s familiar with; remember the anti-Clinton seethe of the ’90s?)

Yet, even though it was the morning after Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell scored her blindsiding win in the Delaware senatorial primary, when Clinton said something like “Let them own their anger,” he seemed to mean something larger than that.

Indeed, on the right, they’re mad about Obamacare, expanded government, Harry Reid and non-Medicare varieties of socialism. On the left, they’re steamed that Obama and the Dems have dribbled their progressive mandate and congressional advantage in a mist of fruitless “bipartisan” compromise. And everyone is angry that “their country” has been “taken away” from them, by which they apparently mean that people they dislike are getting opportunities they don’t.

Although we think of the phenomenon as the impotent rage of the disenfranchised, even the conspicuously franchised have gotten into the act. “The rage of the rich has been building ever since Mr. Obama took office,” Nobel-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman cautioned last week. Well, sure. You curtail their bailed-out bonuses and threaten their Bush-era tax cuts and the upper 1 percent is bound to lose it.

Satire was inevitable (and necessary), so last week some of us Facebooked an AolNews piece by comedian Will Durst, worth quoting at length for its pointedness:

“I’m mad at everything and everybody, but especially at career politicians. Not to mention career pediatricians. From now on, one of my children gets sick, I’m taking them to see some incensed old coot straight off the street carrying a misspelled sign. Experience is way overrated. Why can’t U.S. senator be an entry-level position?”

Hilariously, painfully accurate. But Clinton, although he cracked a few jokes as he addressed the crowd at the House of Blues, wasn’t in a ha-ha mood. “Hold on to your anger,” the former president advised, “but don’t let it cloud your judgment.”

Sensible advice; possibly a little late.

In March, I went to the giant Tea Party throw-down near Searchlight. Although the crowd was mellow and upbeat, the people were clear about one thing: They were angry! Some of it was surely justified, some misdirected and a lot of it gloriously crude (“Make Your Harry Ass Reid the Constitution,” howled one placard).

I’m no psychologist, but the event looked to me like a lesson in how collective anger can be shrewdly managed. While the speakers addressed economic issues, they did it in the emotional, us-vs.-them rhetoric of culture war: It’s all about “elites” in Washington “who think they’re smarter than we are” and want to “tell us how to live our lives.” Grr! People who think they’re so smart piss me off!

If people are riled enough, they might not even notice they’re being manipulated.

Or, perhaps, care. What Clinton left unacknowledged is that disengaged judgment is part of the appeal of being angry. It kind of feels good to bulldoze reasonableness, to toss aside wishy-washy caution and just cut loose.

After all, unclouded judgment is hard; it requires discipline and accountability and a calm appraisal of ideas that might be counter to your own. Who wants that? Anger is not only easier and more fun, it comes programmed with its own self-validating logic, whether you’re all “Obama is a socialist” or “Obama has abandoned his principles.”

If I’m this angry, I must have a good reason!

Sounds like something I want to get in on while there’s still time. I’m happy as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!

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