Posted on 04/21/2010 3:35:03 PM PDT by rickmichaels
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Maybe Howard Beale was right. Maybe when Peter Finch’s tele-ranter urged his viewers in “Network” to go to their windows and yell, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” into the evening void, he was ahead of his time on the primal scream therapy front.
These days, anger in America is such an epidemic that there’s a chat show running on MSNBC this week actually called America the Angry.
It’s a good week for it.
On Monday, the anniversary of both the anti-government radical terrorist attack Oklahoma City bombing and the anti-government cult inferno at Waco, Tex., loaded-gun rallies were held so people afraid of having their loaded guns taken away could express their collective anger at something that hadn’t yet happened.
People are angry at Wall Street because of the financial meltdown and how some people may have made money betting on the chance of a financial meltdown.
There’s a lot of talk these days here about how divided America is, which may be fuelling the anger (both the divisions and the talk about the divisions).
America isn’t divided, it’s subdivided.
Republicans are divided from Democrats but they’re also divided amongst themselves, traditional Republicans from Tea Partiers.
Democrats are divided from Democrats over pragmatism vs. pushing a progressive agenda hobbled from Day 1 by the recession.
Part of this problem, as former president Bill Clinton pointed out in a New York Times op-ed this week, has to do with words.
“As we exercise the right to advocate our views, and as we animate our supporters,” wrote the former president about the parallels between today’s climate and that of 15 years ago, “we must all assume responsibility for our words and actions before they enter a vast echo chamber and reach those both serious and delirious, connected and unhinged.”
The thing about subdivision is that it breeds further subdivision because there are incentives for certain interest groups in fuelling both legitimate and illegitimate anger with hotter and hotter rhetoric.
Whether that is what is making the echo chamber the former president referred to so conducive to earplugs or whether it’s just, as some suggest, one of those moments in history when the tension between change and the status quo naturally exposes pre-existing hatreds, it’s all starting to sound more than a little doolally, to swipe a great Brit-ism.
In the first instalment of America the Angry, host Donny Deutsch, once dubbed “Last of the Madison Avenue wild men,” by New York magazine, admonished “blamers, complainers, whiners and haters” to stop blaming everything and everyone else, from the president to Goldman Sachs to the deficit to Tiger Woods.
“Enough with the anger. I’m angry with anger,” he said in a sort of reverse Howard Beale rant.
It may sound a little stilted bellowed out a window but if enough people in enough subdivisions mumble it at once, it might just work.
The article should have opened with “Mindless, egotist pretty boy Donny Deutsch” said,........
It’s a Canadian paper. They know so much about America and freedom. They’re such a big important country.
Their most important contribution to world culture and wisdom is fried potatoes with gravy and cheese curds on them.
Stop whimpering, Lisa.
Thanks.
So what is this? Angry pseudo-intellects of the self-elected exaggerated important media of “Donnie Deutche” showing anger at those that are angry?
People are angry not for anger’s sake but for the oldest reason known, ‘they were taken for fools’ and are on to those that have shown to be liars and thieves.
Whether people fragment or coalesce in anger is not the issue here. The issues are socialism and taxes, and the lies told to impose more of both.
I’m more of an American than your president.
And Lisa Van Dusen calls herslf a reporter?
MSNBC has already canned Donny...no more Angry in America...
She should watch the news.
Beware the anger of the patient man....
That’s really a remarkable thing to say. When people of almost infinite patience are at their limit, then the most sadistic soldier will cower before them.
Mad with anger?
Well, I just watched a GM commercial saying they paid back the TARP in full. I know DAMNED well that they only moved the money from one line of credit from the taxpayers to the TARP line of credit, so to speak.
When they lie like that I’m supposed to be happy?
Just wait till the great unwashed (read - progressives) realize what any good conservative knows - that we got taxed for 4 years, the monies were spent on purchasing gold-plated toilet paper for the Obamaloon, and there’s no money for actual health care.
Then, the loons had better run...fast...and far....
Grossly understated, I'd say!
If you don’t believe in God, why is it wrong to be angry?
Pragmatic democrats. Pragmatic democrats?!
It’s actually worse than that - I think. I *think* that Govt Motors borrowed $5 billion but sold Uncle Sam $40 billion worth of “equity”. So even if they paid back the $5 billion (which it sounds like they didn’t) there’s still the small matter of the $40 billion, if my facts are correct.
I don’t doubt that and it wouldn’t be hard.
I actually like Canada and Canadians and have been there many times.
There are plenty of good and rational, freedom loving Canadians. Mark Steyn is a good example.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.