Once You Start Running On Anger & Outrage It’s Hard To Stop
A reflection the Trump campaign with helpf from James Baldwin
![[167th St. Station. James Baldwin Mural. New York, NY by Kathy Drasky]](https://otb.cachefly.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/52085397453_a8c5a88f72_k-jpg-e1723729484503-1024x422.avif)
The famous line from the 1976 satire Network is: “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!” In 2016 and even more so this year, that could easily be the Trump Campaign’s slogan. As I covered in a post on J. D. Vance’s lack of media skills it’s clear that the campaign is primarily running on anger and outrage. In that example, Vance responded to a softball question about “What makes you happy?” by explaining why he’s so angry.
This type of outrage was also on display in North Carolina yesterday. Here’s an excerpt where Donald Trump proclaims that the United States is a third-world nation:
Again, his phrasing is NOT “We are BECOMING a third-world nation.” It’s that we ARE ALREADY a third-world nation. While “becoming” is a significant exaggeration (especially for those of us who have traveled the developing world), the “are” formulation is just off-the-charts outrage to the point of self-parody.
Once a campaign chooses anger and outrage as its underlying messaging strategy a challenge they face is they can never let off the breaks. After all, if we are genuinely a third-world country, it means we are already in an existential crisis. Hence why J. D. Vance can’t discuss what might make him happy. The focus always needs to be on anger.
This also includes attacking your opponents for not being angry enough. See this recent comment from Vance:
In Vance’s view, Harris should not smile or dance because the challenges we face as a nation are so big. Perhaps he forgets that Donald Trump often dances to YMCA part of his rallies. Perhaps Trump is just dancing angry.
To be clear, looking at the Trump supporters that post here at OTB, anger resonates with them. Their comments are always full of outrage at the authors and their fellow commenters. They are buying what the campaign is selling.
I am sure at this point, I’ll be called out for not highlighting how angry our Democrat and progressive posters can be at times. Trust me, I know those times well. Yes, there is a lot of anger flying from all sides in the comment threads. To some degree that’s the way of the internet. However, what makes this not a “both sides” thing is that I can quickly find counter-examples where they posted with joy or celebrated the accomplishments of others. Yes, even noted curmudgeon Michael Reynolds takes a break from yelling at Trump supporters and woke YA authors/fans to get off his digital lawn.
This is where I turn to James Baldwin. We just celebrated the 100th anniversary of the great writer and advocate. I’m a bit embarrassed to say that I only really started to explore his work in the past few years. I knew he existed, but was never exposed to his brilliance before seeing others share and discuss it on social media like Twitter. I quickly became a fan and have been slowly working through the wealth of poems, essays, plays, and interviews he left behind. One particular quote of his has been living rent-free in my head recently. It’s from the collection of essays The Fire Next Time.
“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
This quote provides a lot of insight into the attractiveness of running on anger. If you go back to the video of Vance’s attack on Harris’s “Joyful” approach, as much as he’s focusing on being angry, he’s also focusing on real, painful issues like the impacts of poverty and addiction on families. Without a doubt that pain is real.
The problem is that staying angry stops the healing process. It keeps you artificially locked in a single stage of grief while, in the background, the pain grows worse. Any possibility of healing keeps getting put off. And that’s an awful way to exist in the world.
I’m not saying that a “joyful all the time” approach is the right one. However, I think it’s possible to still get angry and experience other emotions while orienting towards joy. I don’t see that possibility in the Trump/Vance approach. And that, to me, is a dead end (and something I believe a majority of the electorate are tired of).
(BTW, that’s also part of the ultimate moral of Network.)
Postscript 1: As I review this for posting, I am concerned that in the current environment, this will be read or used as an “attack” on Trump, Vance, or, more importantly, their supporters. All I can say is that isn’t my intention. As I’ve written about in the past, I have spent much of the last six years diving into the topic of trauma and how it manifests itself in individuals and communities. Running on anger, or perhaps more accurately, trying to outrun pain, is a trauma response (at least in most Western cultures). It’s one of the “five f’s” of self-protection: fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and flop. Those reactions are neither “good” nor “bad”–they simply “are.” That said, just about every clinician and healer I’ve studied all agree that getting trapped in any one of those modes is unhealthy in the long term.
My real hope is that this reflection might get folks thinking about how they (and the candidates they support) might be doing things to keep them stuck in one or more of those trauma responses to the pain they are carrying.
Postscript 2: One other thing I want to be clear about: I don’t think MAGA folks are the only ones who may be struggling with pain. At this historical moment, I think most of us are. COVID-19, by itself, was a global traumatic event. Everyone was affected in different ways. Then there are all the other pains we might carry due to things that happen in our lives. No one is immune from pain.
A meeting rule I enforce is “Don’t oppose, propose.” It’s easy to be a sharpshooter because complex systems will always have issues to address, metrics to improve.
If any contributor is forced to be put in the position of not only coming up with a solution but also proposing it in person to your peers…. As if by magic, not only does a once-sharpshooter now buy in to either current state or a proposed solution, but the attendee also [suddenly?] realizes the actual purpose of whatever’s being discussed.
Trump and Republicans have no solutions to anything because the “just cut taxes on the super-wealthy” policy has been pushed to its furthest. Anger only works on the people who aren’t self-aware or who are intentionally avoiding reality.
“Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to the Dark Side.” –Yoda
Fear is a really powerful motivator, but it is also exhausting. I think that they are running out of runway on this. Clearly, it has worked for Republicans but there is a limit.
Coming at this from a slightly different angle, I think the Harris-Walz “happy warrior” campaign vibe was a strategically smart choice. Harris has an annoying needle to thread: she has to take concerns seriously but must also avoid the “angry Black woman” stereotype/trope.
Vance’s attempt to turn her joy into a liability instead of an asset is evidence of what’s at stake for Harris.
We certainly are falling behind nearly every other developing nation on nearly every measure of social welfare.
The problem is this is pretty much entirely due to a party who’s worldview is root of all good is an absolutely duty for capital owners to suck as many resources out of the rest of society as possible while giving as little back as possible, and then making sure everyone else is completely at the mercy of these predatory people.
So we’re left with Trump and Vance excoriating Harris and Walz for not fixing the problems Republicans are deliberately creating quickly enough.
@Gavin:
You’re literally saying that if someone on your team becomes aware of a problem, but isn’t sure what to do about it, they shouldn’t try to seek out ideas from their coworkers.
My experience is this frequently ends up turning into toxic positivity culture, where no one says anything about problems because they know bringing up any issues will just tag them as the scapegoat.
Sidebar*–in the headline, since “its” in this use is “it is” the proper form is “it’s.”
* I know this is not critical, but it’s/its one of my pet peeves in writing, especially since Word frequently tries to change it to the incorrect use.
@Jen:
Dobbs. Dobbs in particular, other SCOTUS stuff also producing fear and motivating angry voters.
Minor correction – I’m not mad when I write mad. When I write sad, not actually sad. When I write scared? Not really scared, cuz I’m in a La-Z-Boy with coffee and that’s my happy place. When I write mad, I’m laughing, because it’s fun. I enjoy hurting people with words. I mean, I feel kind of bad afterward, because I know I should not indulge my inner sadist. But not bad enough to actually stop. TMI?
Like you, I was aware of Baldwin, but only recently have become more familiar with him through his constant presence in my Reels. He is fascinating in his brutal criticism of American culture and its treatment of blacks while being fundamentally optimistic about humanity, including white humanity.
I have been contemplating recently about what is the right amount of safety or protection, which can be at a personal level or a national level. If every national threat is existential you will spend every cent of your budget and not feed anybody. If every threat is an illusion, you will feed everybody but almost certainly fall prey to one or more of the very real threats out there.
It’s really a guns and butter issue. But I think it is also true of anger/joy. If everything is anger you will be exhausted before you fix anything; if everything is joy you will not bother to fix anything. If you don’t have some of each, you will not function.
To your point, I do not perceive Harris/Walz as lacking all anger, but I do see Trump/Vance as denigrating all joy.
@Joe: I have to remind myself that Joe is not joe when I come across your name in the comments section. Life is too short to spend it on nonsense so I tend to skip over things that have a high nonsense probability factor, but your comments are always worth the read.
@Jen:
I took a break to work on other things and that was the first thing I noticed when I got back. TY for the comment too. It’s corrected.
Look, the average MAGA voter (we’ll ignore the political hacks for a moment) just wants a world that is simple just like (they think) it was when they were kids. This is America. Everything’s supposed to be terrific. If something is wrong, it must be because evil not-nice people are pulling strings behind the scenes and deliberately messing things up. There’s no such thing as bad stuff happening because the world has changed in some way that they weren’t consulted about. No, it’s got to be some cartoon villain doing bad things. Trump is Batman and he’s going to beat up the bad guys.
To think otherwise would be to confront the reality that impersonal forces influence their lives in ways they don’t understand. That’s scary.
@Joe:
I hate it when someone does a better TL;DR on my post than I could have done. Bravo.
@Gavin:
That’s great. I’m going to save that. One I learned about a year ago that I love, and it’s tied in to what you are saying: “When other people are talking, ask yourself “Am I listening to what they are saying or waiting to speak?”
Many years ago I was in an argument with my (later) ex-wife and I had a sort of out of body experience, as if I could see what was happening from above, but mentally, not physically. I realized that while I felt absolutely sure of whatever cutting point I was making, it was actually wrong and she was right. But even after realizing that I could stay in the mental space where I felt right and justified. I realized that it was because I was angry.
Anger is magic. We have an expression, “righteous anger” that the religious tend to use and the popular understanding of it is something like, “I have a license to be angry because I am defending truth.” But after my OOB experience I’ve come to think of it as “Confusing the emotion of anger with truth and certainty, and saying and doing things that I will regret later. Not all that different than getting drunk.
@Matt Bernius: When I was in China everyone that worked for me was born, raised and educated in the Chinese system, and had usually worked for one or more traditional Chinese companies, so there were cultural differences in the expectations of and from the various participants in meetings when compared to the Western corporation we were working for. In trying to understand those differences and adjust for them, it really caused me to look at things even in the Western World in a different way. I came up with a super power-like technique that is useful for everyone, everywhere. Before you go into a meeting where you are going to be a presenter, ask yourself these two things, and think hard about the answers:
1) If you are successful in this meeting, what are the things you want to be different? i.e. what are your goals?
2) Visualize everyone who is going to be in the meeting. What will be of interest or concern to them in what your presenting, and why?
Matt,
Can you shoot me an e-mail?
@Michael Reynolds:
Nah, not TMI at all.
I always feel bad if I am mean. You have an inner sadist. I have an inner narcissist, I suppose. I just like the feeling of casting a good sentence; turning a good phrase.
The last week and a half, I feel an acute need to feed that narcissist. The training in my new job has, more often than not, made me feel slow and dumb. But I have not had the time.
Anger masking pain…
Read your piece after reading a book review of HITLER’S PEOPLE: The Faces of the Third Reich, by Richard J. Evans in the New York Times.
Apparently Richard Evans (Third Reich historian and former director of the Holocaust Museum) initially rejected comparing MAGA with Nazism/Fascism. But in his newest book, he does begin to see some similarities. The review states:
“What Hitler’s people had in common, Evans says, was the shared trauma of total defeat in World War I. For many Germans, the Weimar Republic that followed that loss represented a period of downward social mobility. This was especially pronounced for those who came from the privileged officer class.”
As I’ve stated in other posts, I believe MAGA is connected to men (white men, in particular) having to deal with the liberties afforded to women, people of color, and non-straight orientations and lifestyles; Viet Nam and its wounds, offshoring of jobs; rapid technological change; and the Great Recession. And if a person comes from a abusive home, they may be even more vulnerable to cult experimentation.
I’m going to go and ponder this one for awhile before I jump in. But thanks. Just thanks. Thanks for writing this one, and giving all of us something to think on.
A question I often find myself asking – do these people ever go outside? I mean, this communist, woke, immigrant ridden, worst economy ever, shithole seems actually pretty nice.
I need to go grocery shopping this afternoon. Pretty much everyone I meet will be nice, I will have a huge variety of high quality stuff available, I’ll be on good roads, it’ll cost about what it did months ago, at no point will I feel unsafe (vagaries of traffic excepted), I’ll probably see hiring signs. What’s got these people so angry? Just that they have to share?
I can always tell the difference, MarkedMan, between a person who came to tell me what they know and a person who came to share with me what I needed to know.
“Righteous anger” and self-pity can be just as addicting as heroin. And Vance and Trump are pushing it as much as possible.
@Jen:
“Fear is a man’s best friend.” — John Cale
Some have only anger.
Way back in 2016, when the Felon was more a repugnant curiosity than a threat, I asked in a message board some Felon supporters what were they dissatisfied about the state of the country. I got back tirades that sounded like Felon rallies,a nd lists of all the kinds of people they hated.
Hey all, thank you for the thoughtful engagement with this. I’ll do my best to respond as I can.
One thing I want to call out is I’ve added a second postscript to the post. I’m also putting down here for those of you who come back for the comments:
Sent!
This all just goes to show that as pathetic a person Trump is, Vance is worse. Trump used to be fun. It might not be your or my idea of fun, and it’s often fun at the expense of others, but fun.
(Although, dancing to YMCA in front of an adoring crowd seems like everyone’s idea of fun)
Trump’s genius message in 2016 wasn’t that they were going to hurt brown and queer folks, it was that they were going to hurt brown and gay folks and have fun doing it. I think he’s wandered off the message a bit, losing a lot of the “and have fun doing it.” He’s certainly less fun.
Grievance politics just isn’t fun, and Trump has been grievance politics from the moment he was elected when the other half of the country didn’t join in praising him.
Vance isn’t fun, and has never been fun, and never will be fun. He has denied rumors of ever having fun (albeit, with a couch).
Ron DeSantis got no traction because he isn’t fun, despite the high heeled shoes and the little white boots.
This is why I’m generally hopeful that once Trump has a stroke on the toilet and falls dead on the bathroom floor (or half propped up on boxes of classified documents he stores in the bathroom), Trumpism will quickly whither away with no real successor.
DeSantis isn’t fun, but he’s a small part of something larger that is fun. Take away that something larger and you just have DeSantis, and he’s kind of an asshole but definitely a phony. Repeat that argument with everyone else that’s going to try to be the successor.
——
Say what you will about the inbred racist mouthbreathers who cover their trucks with giant Trump flags, but they’re having a blast.
@Matt Bernius:
First off, thank you for sharing your unique perspective and using it to help us better understand the current political landscape. But, I would ask you to consider this “thoughtful engagement” as I would challenge what you’ve written here:
I’m perfectly willing to extend some empathy for Trump/Vance supporters as I agree that a lot of their trauma is real and their anger is an understandable response. But, MAGA folks aren’t “running on anger,” rather they are being wooed for their campaign contributions and votes. Trump/Vance are running for office and they are appropriating the anger of their supporters for their own power. They are leveraging their supporters’ trauma and they are doing so by selling an elixir of easy answers to their intractable pain. They are exaggerating real issues impacting people’s lives to dystopian proportion as a permission structure that will allow their authoritarianism.
But, the challenging conditions some (but importantly not nearly all) MAGA folks face are completely foreign to those who would lead these people. Trump’s only anger stems from the world withholding the honor & glory he believes he is entitled to. His only trauma is his fear of going to prison. His only pain is his hurt feelings. Vance is no better and he doesn’t care at all about the tears his supporters are shedding over grocery prices beyond how he can use their misfortune to his advantage.
The angry tone of the Republican election strategy is exploitation, IMHO, so I’m not inclined to hold back on attacking Trump, Vance, and the great majority of the Republican Party.
@Stormy Dragon: I didn’t read it that way. I don’t think someone needs to have the ultimate solution to propose an idea, and proposing an idea is often the start of discussion and brainstorming among colleagues.
@Scott F.: nothing better encapsulates the Trump-Vance campaign than this line:
Well done.
@Scott F.:
You gave me a lot to think about and I won’t have a chance to really respond to this today.
I partially agree with what you wrote, in particular, this:
I agree some appropriation is going on. And I also think that Trump and Vance are also running on their own anger and are are also trying to outrace their own pain.
But I think there’s a lot I need to first unpack about my thoughts on this in order to be able to effectively communicate what that means (and also not appear to be offering them, or more importantly, the structures that have embraced this approach too much absolution).
There are some parallels with the Conservative Party in Britain.
Many of their activist members, aligned media commentators, and the right wing MP’s have seemed increasingly, since the millennium, to driven by anger at the contemporary world.
The problem has been that this may work as a motivator for a party in opposition, but is a recipe for factionalism, incompetence, and largely PR-based pandering when in government.
The old Party elite have never fully bought into it; but have in their various ways tried to appease it or use it. See variously Cameron, May, Johnson and Sunak. With Truss being the only one dim enough to be “true believer”.
And in consequence, Brexit, migrant-bashing, and half-hearted culture war.
But trying to run government as a perpetual election campaign is dubious; and Conservatives attacking the “establishment” is both ludicrous and foolish.
The whole thing tended to alienate a lot of traditional “upper middle” Conservative voters, who valued stability, continuity, moderate traditionalism, economic competence, effective government, and adherence to norms.
When the legacy of “austerity” combined with prolonged economic stagnation was topped off by the Truss debacle, the Sunak government was caught.
If it pandered to anger it simply highlighted the Tory failure, even (especially?) on right-wing terms and encouraged a shift to Reform on the right, or a reversion to post-Corbyn Labour by some working class voters.
While at the same time driving the “moderate Conservatives” to the Liberal Democrats.
But if it tried to campaign on its record, it just invited derision.
You can run on “angry” but it’s damn hard to govern effectively on that basis.
And its a turn-off for the section of the country that, while perhaps critical, is not consumed by rage.
Labour under Starmer appears to be rather more sensible.
While vehemently critical of specific policy failure, and misbehaviour in office – Starmer in Parliament, facing Johnson in particular, was visibly both seething and contemptuous at times – they have taken the course of addressing concrete issues, to be resolved by practical delivery of sensible policy, on housing, health, economic stability and growth, fiscal realism etc.
But not portraying the country as in a state of terminal decline worthy of only of rage and despair.
@JohnSF: also if you do nothing but complain that your opponents are “ the most radical candidates in history” when everyone can see that they’re at most vaguely left-wing, I imagine that at some point the ice will crack under that argument as well.
At some point you have to quit whining and start producing. You can’t just keep complaining that 50% of Americans don’t support you and that your feelings are hurt.
@Matt Bernius:
As you consider your fuller response, I would ask that you flesh out this thought in particular:
They’ve got plenty of anger and they’re running for office. I’ll give you that. But, as I alluded to in my comment, I see no evidence of empathy-worthy trauma inflicted on Trump or Vance. Trump was born into immense wealth and he has punched down his entire life. Vance’s humble beginnings are miles behind him and he has ridden venture capitalism and a “memoir” written at the ripe age of 32 to more wealth than I will ever know.
You’re going to have to do some work for me to give the smallest fig about any first world pain either of these men is trying to outrace or to convince me their anger has any justification beyond their grievances regarding thwarted entitlement.
@Scott F.: I am no psychologist, but I don’t think you just grow out of your childhood trauma without some real work. I have seen plenty of plausible explanations about Trump’s broken personality that stem from his relationship with his father. What little I have read about Vance (I have not read the book) is a garden of personal trauma to chose from. The fact that both live in relative physical comfort and success is no evidence to me that either don’t suffer personally or through serious personality disorders (mostly in Trump’s case) that stem from widely reported childhood or other traumas.
@Grumpy realist:
.
Like the Tories trying to paint Starmer and his shadow cabinet as “hard left” when he (and even more his consiglieres Pat McFadden and Morgan McSweeney, (aka the “Irish assassins”) and the “two Matts” (Matt Faulding and Matt Pound) were gleefully purging the Corbynites.
And with a Reeves as fiscal hawk shadow Chancellor, and Sue Grey as Chief of Staff?
Absurd, and laughably so.
Actual policy delivery will take time: but its already plain that the Cabinet is focused on actually working, not leaking, campaigning for party/press favour, and in-fighting.
The Civil Service seems delighted that they now have ministers focused on getting things done and policies implemented, not plaudits from the partisan media and party activists.
Don’t have any deep thoughts to add to this very thoughtful thread, but wanted to thank Matt for introducing me to this beautiful Baldwin quote.
Also on the subject of anger and its consequence from a UK perspective:
The recent anti-migrant riots were are eruption from the angry mob of the extreme right, plus a crossover of various apolitical idiots and career hooligans, deriving from an overly online echo chamber channeling disinformation and agitation.
The spark being a horrible knife attack that killed three young girls, and wounded several others, and several adults who defended them.
The social media lies were that the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker who’d arrived as an “illegal” on one of the “small boats” and was on a MI5 “radical Islamist” watch list.
In reality, he was British born, to Rwandan legal migrant parents; and most likely a Catholic (uncertain).
The thing is, some right wing politicians/commentators from Reform, or Reform-aligned, began the “asking questions” insinuations themselves.
And some right wing Tories kept quiet, or made sly remarks.
To their credit, most mainstream Conservatives condemned the mobs.
And the polling indicates only about 15% regarded the riots as “protests”.
The overwhelming majority reject that framing.
And the government has encouraged and supported the police, while “encouraging” (they can’t exactly order) a robust response. And enabling the courts to deal with the culprits.
The magistrates and judges concerned, without needing to be instructed directly, have therefore come down hard on both rioters, and some social media posters under “incitement” law.
The “angry”are being taught a lesson: there are limits to what your anger permits, determined by law, order, and the interests of civil society and the state. Overstep those limits and you shall regret it.
Interestingly, a court also sentenced “anti-oil” protestors who aimed at gridlock of the London motorway system to jail terms of up to five years.
Having a former Director of Public Prosecutions in Number 10 seems to encourage a firm line by the judiciary.
To general public approval.
@Matt Bernius:
I agree with this assessment.
Trump’s father seems like he was a real @sshole, from a number of different angles. Trump’s older brother basically drank himself to death trying to manage the unrelenting glare of Fred Trump’s gaze. While I will never excuse Donald Trump’s behavior, it’s clear that his father did some real damage to his kids.
JD Vance’s horrific opinions about women seem to be a pretty direct line to his own mother’s dysfunctional parenting.
You can have a bad childhood and turn out to be a good person. I know plenty of people who have.
But there are other people whose response to pain is to inflict as much as possible upon others.
American conservatives, of any age, are people who are uncomfortable in the modern world.
Even the young ones like Vance and Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro are deeply uncomfortable with the world into which they were born, and angry at virtually everyone and everything around them.
Their anger is inexplicable and implacable because they have no legitimate grievance, no oppression, no injustice to claim. Their criticisms of feminism or queer acceptance never involve any actual harm to them, but always dissolve into some claim of harm to “society”.
What their real grievance is is, of course, that they are in a world in which their race or sex or religion doesn’t afford them the superior status they believe they are entitled to.
But again this is an implacable claim. There is no world in which JD Vance or Donald Trump or any of these creatures are anything other than mediocrities.
The other thing that makes this not a “both sides” situation is that the left-wing angry shouters are not elected officials, candidates for President or Vice President, or otherwise significant in what policies a Democratic administration would/will/might implement. Or is implementing, for that matter.
How far to the left of (global) center is AOC? Not far enough left to be taken seriously in an actual far-left party, and she’s an outlier among current democrats. How angry is she? On a scale of zero to Trump, she’s about a four — and, again, she’s an outlier at present.
There is no symmetry here. I say that (though Lounsbury won’t believe it) not out of reflexive partisanship, but rather as an important point in understanding the current situation. Leftists can be angry assholes, but angry assholery is not part of the Democratic platform, and will not be any time soon.
@Matt Bernius:
Where would this country be if psychology was a required course in high school for the past 50 years? Maybe even with a section on anger management. Or identifying narcissistic personality disorders.
Actually, given where psychology was 50 years ago, that might have been bad. And perhaps partially developed frontal cortexes might not be the most receptive to these ideas.
But, I’d be willing to ditch chemistry and replace it with psychology. The number of kids who will get any value from chemistry is tiny, and almost certainly less than the ones who get any value from psychology. Or a math class.
@Gustopher: And even if you can make it a requirement and force everyone to take it, the only way you’ll get everyone out of the class with a “satisfactory” or higher grade is by putting the bar they have to hop over on the floor. (And even then, some kid’s gonna have drop toe or some other gait malady and trip over the bar rather than hopping or walking over it.) How much of the course material is going to stick–partially developed frontal cortexes (cortesies?) allowed for?
I remember a conversation with one of my 14th year in EFL Level I students where he gave his response to the announcement that his university was going to refuse to give diplomas to students who didn’t score above the median on the Test Of English in Communications test (the Korean version of TEFL); “Oh no, teacher, too many student fail. Woosong change rule.”
And they did. Almost before the ink had dried on the original edict.
This feels more like hate to me with the anger just an expression of that hate. It’s very important for conservatives to have an “other” to look down on or hate. Every time another letter gets added to LGB they have more people to hate. Now they can hate elites (anyone with an education I guess), feminists, Muslims, progressives, etc. I think they mostly look down on POC.
There’s a real dopamine rush from that anger. It’s also a real bonding event as they join the brotherhood ( still think it’s a cult).
Steve
One thing I realized from reading a more sane version of Rod Dreher years ago is that a) he craved and needed a therapeutic dialogue and b) any attempt at actual therapy threw him into a rage because with therapy comes an obligation to respond as a human being, and he lacked the ability to be truthful. I think that’s the core problem for everybody in their lives. Nobody has an easy shot when it comes to understanding.
But if your problems with understanding are at a level where it’s like how can a person laugh when there’s pain, as if laughter contradicts pain, you are very naive. It’s like somebody really believing crying is a sign of weakness. The sad truth is that American conservatism is not about real conservatism. It’s about repression. And why wouldn’t it be? This stuff comes from the white south, where white people had to repress everyday questions about what your neighbors and loved ones really were up to.
@JohnSF:
Unfortunately, while true, this only applies to people actually wanting to govern. If all you want to do is toast marshmallows over the dying embers of society, letting your rage burn the sucker to the ground is the goal.
Trump has often had difficulties with the concept of tense, exemplified by “we’re already a third world nation, we’re not going to let that happen”. In similar fashion he frequently contradicts his own declarative sentences as soon as he’d voiced them. At yesterday’s sham “press conference”, for example, he declared “We’ll get along very well with Iran. Maybe not.” The result is that his word salad is literally meaningless but offers fans a smorgasbord of soundbites from which to select the meaning they prefer.
@Joe: They may well have suffered childhood trauma, but I guarantee every poster on this board, the hotel maid down the street, the police officer next block over, and your kid’s schoolteacher have suffered at least as much childhood trauma as those two knuckleheads.
Becoming wealthy doesn’t innoculate us from doing the work on our trauma, rather it might serve as a multiplier and reflector of said trauma on the rest of us.
@Stormy Dragon:
The point is that the person needs to work through the entire process — either in their head or with coworkers — to take their complaint, work through the action of noticing the flaw to a complete counter-proposal, and defend that counter-proposal to the scrutiny of their peers.
Rather than somehow induce toxicity, this actually increases buy-in because the system…. is the product of the team rather than “pushed down by management.”
The point is that anything utilizing humans is inherently flawed, and all systems are made of tradeoffs. Often a sharpshooter with some one issue will, when they work through their complaint, realize that the final product isn’t measurably better than current state.
The part that would be toxic is the “Here’s the problem but I’m not responsible for fixing it” bombshell-dropping. The entire point of “Don’t oppose, propose” is that the team as a collective whole does have that responsibility.
@Gustopher:
We’ve had nine years of intense grievance politics and it’s possible that we collectively are experiencing a kind of PTSD. I hope we’ve reached an inflection point, a tipping point, where the fever breaks, and we can get back to a normal level (27%?) of civic dysfunction.