Anger is the cousin of fear. It is the flip side of flight: fight. It's an understandable and explainable reaction to events out of control. Events might be physical: flood, famine, war, or any of their smaller-scale relatives. But the real events are always internal. It is our reaction to physical events - including inflammatory speech - that require the real attention.
A man who carries a gun into a hotel and uses it to mow down hundreds of people he doesn't even know, for no discernible reason (not that there could ever be a reason), makes us angry because it offends our sense of goodness and justice. It disturbs our perception of safety and violates our right to be secure in body and mind. It disrupts our peace.
A woman who barges in front of you in traffic or in line at the grocery, who gives you a smug look, who gives you the finger, and laughs because she's gotten the better of you - she has "won" - boils our blood (unless we are fairly enlightened and can say "well, if that's what makes her day" - some days I am better at this than others). Why? Because we also believe she got the better of us. How dare she. And here I thought I was in control of what happens to me. Here I thought everyone would stream around me like rocks in a creek.
A man stands on a box and waves his hands around and yells things that appeal to the simmering anger of crowds of people who feel they've been wronged - that the things they deserve have been taken from them or are about to be - although the things he is yelling (you have been injured, you deserve better, you are victims, you are better than "those others") are merely PR, not necessarily truly-held beliefs. This man spews hatred, vitriol, and ugly battle cries. And people who have been holding back their hatred and vitriol hew to the cries. They are finally "allowed" to express their feelings - of hate and vitriol. Which exist because they feel hard done by. Their "rights" have been trodden upon. Things have been "taken" from them. They would not be nearly so satisfied by a candidate who said "reality bites. You have lost your jobs because technology has overtaken manufacturing and because coal is dirty and unsafe and is being replaced by solar and wind, which is better for everyone, but you have not been swept up in the tides of progress. You are having to share power and place and status and rights with those you have historically used to make yourselves feel superior - those of different color, of different religion, of different culture or lifestyle than you. I want you to have retraining in new fields so you can be part of the new economy. And I want you to accept people into your lives who are different from you, because that will make your lives richer and our country and our economy more vibrant."
No.
Our man on the box instead opened his arms to their anger. He fed it, seemed to share in it, reflected it, and told them they were right. And that he would save them. Which he never intended to do, but it didn't matter. He nurtured and harvested their anger, the least common denominator of experience, the basest, most easily-accessed instinct which overtakes compassion, tolerance, and desire for peace. As an aspect of fight-or-flight, it is the first stepping stone on the path to problem-solving when people are at the end of their rope. A rope that wouldn't even exist if they had not been "stripped" of what they felt were their god-given rights: to be superior to someone, and to be secure in a familiar economy. The man on the box tapped into the thing that they had actually lost, as opposed to the things they imagined they had: the right to always be right. They had never been taught that there are not some people who are more valuable than others. Critical thinking having not been an essential requirement for their education, they had lost the opportunity to learn that might does not make right, or that ideas are worth more than money, or that opinions are not knowledge. They had never been given a reason to look outside their small circle of experience to see that other ways are not fearful. Instead, they were taught that what they had always known and always done was forever the only right way.
Those of us who don't live in that circle? The ones the man on the box has now largely dismissed as irrelevant because we do not follow or believe his rantings, because we don't view him as savior? What has happened to us?
We are angry.
We are angry that these people, his followers, have been left behind and minimized historically, yes. But we are angry that the conditions that allowed that minimization ever occurred. We are, perhaps justifiably, angry at ourselves for not having noticed earlier, before the product of their simmering ire became so painfully apparent. We are angry that we didn't see this coming, because, well, we were mostly fine, and they were not our people, so we didn't know.
All that can amount to an excuse of a sort. But what makes us even angrier is that their man on his box continues to stoke their anger. He continues to feed off it, as if their anger is a drug and he is addicted to it. He infuses himself with it. And he grows angrier. Why? Because even his followers are getting tired. Anger is exhausting. We aren't built for it. It isn't our natural state. Most of us want the same thing: a peaceful world where people generally get along. Even his followers who have spent a couple of years riding that wave and envisioning the glory of destruction and the satisfaction of vengeance are becoming tired. It takes a lot of energy to keep up that level of hate. And it isn't really working. Partly because the man never intended to keep any of those promises of destruction and revenge. But partly because destruction and revenge are like violence: they only breed more of the same. No problems get solved. We just keep seeing red. And eventually we remember all the lovely colors we haven't seen in a while.
So we over here are left with our anger, because we still have a higher standard than simply "not hurting each other." We actually believe that citizens and government have a duty to build. To protect. To support. To show compassion. We haven't even reached "live and let live" at this point. So still we fume.
Why? Because we are afraid it won't end. We are afraid that the seed that was planted by the man on the box is still being watered and fertilized. And we are afraid that those of us who want nothing to do with the hate and the divisions and the blaming and the vitriol will not be stronger than the divisions and the vitriol.
And because our anger is as much if not more concerned with the fortunes of others than ourselves, we are not tired yet.
Anger that is born out of desperation and anxiety for oneself dies sooner than anger that spurs demands for justice for everyone. Funny how that works. It's as if the former has less shelf-life. Maybe because it has no rationale. Because it's not true that someone with a different skin color is worth less than you. It's false that someone else's religion, if it's not yours, is wrong. It's not true that lifestyles and preferences and norms that you never knew about are scary. It's not true that people have taken your coal jobs because they hate you. And it's not true that you are bad. So you don't need to make others small so that you can be big. You can stand up and say "I have lost my way of living and I need help to find a new way." But it's not okay to say "I lost my way of living so I have a right to tear down the people I have decided to blame." Your elected representatives have a duty to respond to the former. But there is no rational response to the latter - the box the man is standing on. And so the anger based on the latter begins to fizzle. All that's left are the die-hards. The ones who refuse to see another way. Which leaves us with white supremacy and cruel immigration policies and walls that "keep those people out." It leaves us with people who solve their internal issues with guns. It leaves us with politicians who don't think their fat bank accounts are enough. They want more. So they rationalize taking from the people who don't have anything to take. You know, the people who supported that man.
There's nothing wrong with a little anger. It gets stuff done. But when it starts to eat you up and it becomes the theme for your life (looking at you, box-man), that's when it becomes dangerous. By this time, there is no counterbalance. And it's still all within. Anger only survives if you allow it. But it will take you down.
What is there to be done? Anger today is a curse on the countryside, a pox running rampant in the cities. We are so used to its bubbling presence inside us that we don't even notice it anymore; it is just background noise. If we don't soon turn away from it and find another common theme we are done for. We may not literally be dead but we might as well be. Anger is meant to be a tool, not a way of life. This virus must be stopped before it becomes a plague. After a certain point, we cannot survive it.
There is a solution, but you're not going to like it. Brace yourself for the next installment.
