THE POLITICS OF ANGER

Election season is upon us---it’s all over us. Voters are angry; candidates are angry. Voters are angry at politicians; they’re particularly angry at politicians who are not angry. All over the country we’ve seen politicos move up in the polls after expressing rage, such as New York GOP Gubernatorial candidate, Carl Paladino, who threatened to “take a baseball bat to Albany.” OK! Will there be any cool heads left standing to run the country, or will we be in the hands of clueless hot-heads on a highway full of impassioned, road-raging motorists brandishing their 2^nd Amendment rights?

It appears that the president will survive, although signs have been dropped of impending impeachment hearings! The president has committed “high crimes and misdemeanors?” This is irrelevant, of course: the Republican strategy is to distract the government so that no constructive work can be accomplished---work that might be credited to the Democratic Party. Who cares about the country? This is about getting elected. Groundless impeachment proceedings fit the bill---it worked to distract Bill Clinton, and it actually succeeded with Grey Davis!

Who are these angry people, and what are they worked up about?

The obvious answer is that they are frustrated people, impacted by the economic downturn, and lashing out at supposed villains, perpetrators. These are people who have bought into “The American Dream,” and see that their birthright is destabilized, violated. These are people who have spent a lifetime believing that our lots will forever ascend…at least through their lifetimes. This is what the people of China, Greece, Rome, Netherlands, Spain, Britain, “The Third Reich”, Japan, in their time, also assumed.

Anxiety can easily turn to rage when our “leaders” stoke the fire by telling us we’re victims. This most insidious tool of the demagogue tells us that we are being victimized, and to focus on a scapegoat. It’s fascinating that the groups using these techniques also demonize the president by comparing him with Hitler!

These tools of manipulation are always available to those vile enough to use them. But the problem, Dear Brutus, lies not in the stars, but within us. We are political children, unsophisticated---ignorant.

Those now screaming the loudest have stood back while the economic booms of the ‘90s and ‘00s funneled the spoils of prosperity to a small group. They voted for the politicians who perpetrated the policies that caused this, and they are now supporting candidates whose response to our predictable crisis is to continue with those same policies. While most anxious voters look for reasonable sources of information, the “angry” ones wish only to rally ‘round their convictions. In these times of economic pain, they seek validation! Their struggle is bad enough without having someone tell them they are wrong or worse: responsible!

Democrats, or the president, can bombard the airways, op-ed pages and blogs with studies, but this deflects to oblivion. According to Hank Jenkins-Smith, political scientist at University of Oklahoma, “If you have a strongly held belief with an emotional component, the brain defends information that reinforces those ‘priors’ and is skeptical of information that challenges them.” When our emotions are engaged in the conversation, logic is disabled, and the fact that “experts” contradict our beliefs only stiffens our defensive conviction.

The only true resolution for this mess MUST come from us! Among scattered, disenfranchised, under-educated, misinformed, apathetic, easily-manipulated voters, this is a tall order.

Picture a family of four. Doctors have told the parents their two over-weight pre-teens are “pre-diabetic.” The parents know well enough that their children require decent food, with balanced diet and exercise, but with marital turmoil they cravenly use their children as a battlefield. They curry favor from the kids, each playing off the other. Mealtimes are at the mall, where the father insists that the kids have their choice at the food court of which pavilion to attend. The kids go for ice cream and cookies! The father assures them that their mother is a stern, unloving tyrant if she dares to suggest the salad bar. The kids know nothing else, because they’ve grown up with no knowledge of nutrition---but they know what they like!

As their health is on the verge of collapse and nutritional warnings become more strident, the kids cling to their father’s assurances that ice cream and cookies are just fine. Any threat to bring them to the vegetable stand causes them to scream and throw a tantrum. Instead of acting 9 and 11, now seem to be 4 and 5.

We have grown up since the 50s believing in the strength, the invincibility of our country, our system of government. We believe those political leaders, who since 1981 have told us we don’t have to pay the price of government services. In fact, we haven’t been paying the bills since the forties; but emerging from the war, our prosperity and industrial strength were so great that this drain was masked. By the 70s the picture was becoming clear. Jimmy Carter was the first politician with the political courage to line out our limitations and chart a course for future prosperity. We rejected that!

When Howard Jarvis (Proposition 13, 1978) showed us the blueprint for anti-tax populism, and no politician (except Jerry Brown, who half-heartedly opposed the measure) stood up for responsible, public policy, the die was cast. In 1981 Ronald Reagan backed up wholesale tax-cuts with dramatic increases in government spending. If we were taxed to pay for the excesses of government (like waging immoral wars), we wouldn’t stand for this! But divorced from the responsibility of paying, we have lost interest in how much government costs. The Reagan formula has been the paradigm for Republican populism ever since. We pay lip service to fiscal responsibility, but when pressed for real reform, we defer to the mantra of waste, corruption, oh, and blame the poor (who have no political clout.)

The sad parallels in the allegory of our dysfunctional family are all too familiar. The father doesn’t care about his children; he uses them as leverage in the personal struggle with his wife. The mother may care for the children, but feels powerless in the face of the father’s manipulation. She has colluded too long to have a serious voice of authority over their life-style.

We are not 9-year-olds, but we are the politically and culturally equivalent. We’re unwilling to face the stark reality that our national spending binge can no longer be sustained in the face of collapsing economic power, financial chicanery and a planet that can no longer sustain our wasteful gluttony. [We’re uninterested in the truth about nutrition.] Clearly those politicians who go on telling us that we don’t have to pay the bills (taxes) don’t care about the welfare of this country; their only objective is to attract voters.

Curiously, the angry tea-partiers are righteous in their rebellion against the treatment that we’ve been subjected to our whole lives, but they’re unwilling to face the reality of what needs to be done. Anti-tax platitudes line the road to election. They still insist on dining at the dessert pavilion. Their strident voice comes off as a tantrum and attracts media attention.

What’s going to turn this around? We need to face the true costs of our national standard of living. It cannot be sustained without enormous investment in education and new technology. This requires serious enlightenment, which at this time our schools don’t provide. They’re too busy focusing on inane standards testing. We, disillusioned consumers, are the teachers!

It begins at the ballot box. Do we vote for candidates who champion ever decreasing tax burdens for all…even the richest of the rich?!! Or do we vote for candidates who at least try to present a valid picture of what needs to be done?

See the accompanying Robbinsense endorsements for the up-coming election.