Rageaholics Anonymous

The party of contempt and spite has itself a rampage.

“Tis a passion that is pleased with and flatters itself. How often, being moved under a false cause, if the person offending makes a good defence and presents us with a just excuse, are we angry against truth and innocence itself?” — Michel de Montaigne, from his essay, entitled ‘of anger’.

The building that houses Congress, including the hallowed chamber of the Senate, was breached by a rampaging mob, yesterday. The chamber was empty, having been evacuated after a Trump rally went pear-shaped and whose members would not obey DC police orders to disperse. The intruder into the Senate chamber, a man wearing a black jacket, black gloves, a long checked scarf, and a black hat with incongruously bright red stripes seemed to be half-amused and somewhat scared under a sneering blush of anger and resentment. He was also wearing what looked like some sort of protective knee and shin guards. He reached the dais and mounted it. Seating himself in the Senate President’s chair — under the engraving of E Pluribus Unum — he raised a fist and declared that Trump had won the election.

Welcome to the guerrilla insurgency of the ruling party…

Wait… What?

One might think that, of all the people all in the world, Donald Trump would have the least cause to be angry. Having been given so much, and having taken even more for himself, his many wishes granted and his every desire sated: Surrounded by wealth and luxury, one could imagine that he might be a graceful and grateful person; Or, at the least, much less angry. And yet, the essential component of Trump's personality, even more than the greed and ostentatious wealth, seems to be the anger: It radiates from him in just about everything he says and does. It is both the cause and the concern of his lies: anger having warped his perspective and turning himself against himself.

Now Trump has unleashed a great multitude of rageaholics: addicts to anger who are not angry because they believe Trump’s lies, they believe the lies to feed their anger fix. It is a spasmodic indulgence in entitlement that not even the truth can stand against.

This is a dangerous thing because anger is always a mighty distortion of perspective, an ugly destroyer-in-refusal only and it cannot be controlled. Engaging in anger feeds more anger and fuels violence. Consider the contrast to 2016 when Hillary Clinton clearly declined to engage in anger, though she had far greater cause to be angry than either Sanders or Trump… How many distorted votes did Trump receive not just because they were angry but because Hillary Clinton was not? How many people failed to resonate with the calm deliberateness of Clinton because they were too invested in their own rage…? How many rejected her because she did not embrace anger?

Every major religion — everyone — throughout the world, condemns anger. The Prophet Muhammad taught Muslims to control themselves and to not be angry, lest it lead to more sin. The Jewish Tanakh is full of object lessons about angry people who come to a bad end and the Psalms and Book of Proverbs repeatedly say to turn away from anger. Buddha taught unfettered compassion and listed ten grave precepts, one of which is not to indulge in anger. Jesus threatens judgement to those who are angry with a brother or a sister and further enjoins his followers to bless those who hate them and to pray for those who sin against them. The Bhagavad Gita says that anger clouds judgement leading to delusion and ultimately to destruction. The Catholics Church lists anger as one of the seven deadly sins.

While being against anger is, ostensibly, central to many religions. Many who are religious are all too eager, it seems, to indulge themselves in their anger.

“He is not strong and powerful who throws people down but he is strong who withholds himself from anger¹.”

The young child who is angry will scream ‘NO’ at the top of his lungs and fling whatever it is that has caused displeasure far away, without care or concern for who gets hurt or what gets damaged. Anger is the opposite of acceptance. Anger is denial.

We like to think that adults don’t act out of their anger in this manner, but why would we like to think that? Certainly, the larger part of Donald Trump’s tweets could fairly well be described as “screaming ‘NO’ at the top of his lungs and flinging whatever it is that has caused displeasure far away, without care or concern for who gets hurt or what gets damaged.” But he’s not an outlier: Can anyone who watched the Brett Kavanaugh meltdown say differently? Can anyone who watched the Trumpist mob overwhelm the DC Police and storm the Capitol building say other than that they were fueled and animated by anger, even at the expense of the truth?

A fair case can be made that the avoidance of anger was the animating principle of the founding fathers as they wrote, first, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers and, later, the Constitution. With a deep concern for Enlightenment principles of fairness and reason they knew such principles could not lead to right policy if motivated by fiery and momentary passions — indeed any policy could well be undone by such passions. To that end they made the process deliberate, time-consuming and with countervailing and competing concerns, forcing us to deliberate. The Constitution, it may well be said, is a document that, first and foremost, forbids anger.

The founding fathers, however, did not reckon with media, consulting, and election industry: which, near as not never mind, could be fairly well described as machines for generating either rage or pleasure and which sometimes attempts to create both at once: Fox News is a perpetual revel in the pleasures of the ongoing rage-gasm; CNN and MSNBC are different in scale, perhaps, but not in type. The election process is mean-spirited, cut-throat, low-down and dependent upon a ceaseless fusillade of lies and calumny, guaranteed to bring out anger in a sizeable portion of the populace.

Not that the anger is confined to the Right. Bernie Sanders is also very angry, constantly fulminating against the powers-that-be and the tide of corporate greed and societal inequality. His applause lines have the form of japes, but designed to achieve growls and hisses rather than laughter. He regularly invokes the term, ‘revolution.’ To be sure, such ill-gotten wealth and the iniquitous oppression that the Senator rails against are pernicious and to be opposed: Sanders maybe on the side of the angels, but in his anger and vitriol, may be attempting to wield the fire of demons. Indeed, the most stunning fact to come out of the 2016 election is that one in ten of Sanders primary voters ended up voting for Donald Trump. The swing from voting angry socialist (Sanders) to voting angry fascist (Trump) suggests that the adjective is the fulcrum: rage is the pivot upon which the votes swing.

The republic, at present, is in the hands of the rage-aholics. Nothing will change, no progress will occur, and no good outcome will be achieved. They are caught between their anger and the increasingly ridiculous lies that fuel the anger. Well meaning people, either of the left, or in the corps of journalists throw logic and reason at them, in futile attempt. They will not see reason. They are well past that.

Or, as John F Kennedy said in his one and only inaugural address, before he was felled by an angry, delusional, assassin, “…and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.”

Buckle your seats. The Biden administration is going to be a bumpy ride. Not because of anything to do with Biden, but because of the rage kraken unleashed by the unhinged. The best thing that you can do is decide where you stand and stand there.

1: Harrani, Tuhaf al-Uqul an aal al-Rasul, p.33, 5th Edition.

© Petr Swedock 2021