Axis
“Anger, he smiles,
Towering in shiny purple metallic armour
Queen Jealousy, envy waits behind him
Her fiery green gown sneers at the grassy ground.”
-- Jimi Hendrix, Bold as Love
Chronic anger is a disease. One of the symptoms is that it leads to divisions, as in when groups of angry individuals splinter into smaller and smaller sub-groups that are hostile to one another. This is what we are witnessing in American society today, just as it is spreading around the globe.
It’s happening in large regions of this country, and within states, communities, and neighborhoods. Indeed, it is happening within families. Chronic anger elected Donald Trump as the next president. One would have to be in full denial to believe that the nation is not experiencing a serious illness.
There are divisions between the progressive and liberal communities, which were brought to a head by the 2016 presidential election. If one were to read closely enough, one could even find evidence of this on the Democratic Underground.
Now, I’m not talking about the spontaneous emotion of anger. Closely related to fear, in the context of the brain and body, anger has played a role in human evolution. Rather, I am talking about chronic anger, which is destructive to both the individual’s brain and body, and to groups of people.
Chronic anger makes individuals and groups self-righteous. It brings about selfishness, and other forms of self-deception. And this is self-defeating. I can think of no better example than a statistic I heard reported, that some 14% of registered Democrats voted for Donald Trump. Safe to say that these were angry, rather than happy, people.
In this sense, anger and fear share many common characteristics. None are more important than their good and bad potentials: for if handled properly, they can produce the fuel required to achieve victory, or each can result in burn-out -- with anger causing a form of burn-out that the individual fails to recognize. Chronic anger exhausts one’s ability to think rationally and objectively.
In a healthy, well-functioning society, the chronically angry people are understood to have problems. In an unhealthy, dysfunctional society, those angriest of people are mistaken for leaders. Again, there is no better example than Donald Trump’s election. Yet, while this is easily understood by all, far fewer people seem capable of applying this same dynamic to smaller groups.
This allows for the angriest voices in communities to be mistaken for “speaking for the group.” There are two distinct dangers associated with this, the first being that it becomes remarkably easy for the group’s opposition to exploit. Almost without exception, for example, it was provocateurs (“:inciting agents”) who promoted hostilities in the Civil Rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s-’70s. They exploited the groups’ angers and fears to divide them.
This is not to imply that all the problems within the liberal and progressive communities -- or within the Democratic Party -- are the result of outside agitators. For example, we should take note of the fact that the republicans have won three of the last five presidential elections. Consider the number of republican governors that will be running states in 2017. And the large number of elections for the House and Senate that have been lost in recent years.
In that context, is it rational to think that more victories will be achieved by further dividing the groups and individuals that might form the party’s base of support in the future? Or might it be better to consider the possibility that the party’s leadership has some responsibility for the failure to win elections? Those appear to be our two options: either to engage in a puritanical orgy of finger-pointing and blaming others, or else taking responsibility for our own actions an inactions. It would seem worthwhile to consider which of those two options that the party’s leadership has taken since election day.
Peace,
H2O Man
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