Many of us live with the impression that recently more precisely starting from 2016 during and after Donald Trumps presidential campaign American society has become too negativistic when it burst into repeated fits of rage.
Is rage essentially a negative phenomenon? Is rage a recent phenomenon? Is rage predetermined by the current president? Lets try to find some answers to these questions.
1. Rage a negative phenomenon?
Psychology studies show us that rage is a very dense form of communication and that it contains more quickly more information than many other types of emotions.
Many episodes of rage take the form of restricted conversations that rarely degenerate into physical altercations. They tend to improve the negative situations by solving them later not by exacerbation.
In many cases the same studies show the expression of rage makes the conflicting parties more likely to listen to one another to discuss more sincerely and to accommodate as far as possible the problems of the other.
Many people in a ratio of 3 to 1 declared themselves happier after releasing their negative energies on other people in the sense that they felt more energetic and optimistic about their future. Also their target persons in a ratio of 2 to 1 agreed that anger attacks helped them to understand the signals to listen more carefully in the future and eventually to change their behavior.
Subsequent studies have found other benefits. Rage motivates us to solve difficult tasks. We become more creative when we are angry because anger helps us to reinforce the solutions we have ignored.
2. Rage a recent phenomenon?
America has always been an angry nation. We are a country born of revolution. American history is constantly marked by episodes in which the aggrieved parties have settled their differences with weapons not through conversation.
We can say therefore that there is a social rage" in society as a component of the nations genetic code. Cultural political and economic changes engender tensions that produce mutations in the social environment. As a result there are just as many forms of public rage generated and accentuated by the new target conditions.
- (a) Conservative rage related to traditional and moral-biblical values. In an earlier period rage was unleashed by actions of state secession (Civil War of 1861-1865) triggered by the southern democrats. President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated for being considered a traitor to his race." Then the feeling of rage was manifested through anti-Darwinist demonstrations in schools. Later on it continued in the 1960s with anti-communist activism on university campuses during the Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwaters election campaigns and with Rush Limbaughs broadcasts from the mid-1980s. Specific reasons included: segregation traditional marriage and anti-abortion.
- (b) Liberal rage related to social and cultural values. In the beginning liberal rage poured into the original sin" of slavery (from a Christian perspective). In 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe published her anti-slavery novel Uncle Toms Cabin. But modern liberals have become almost exclusively secular. The secular liberal rage also generated by the Western European atheistic political culture spilled over into American society in the 1960s. Specific reasons included: womens emancipation anti-war sentiment racism and environmental pollution. Also the rage of modern liberals tends to enclave itself in marginal elite causes such as animal protection and transgenderism. All these reasons are considered by liberals as causes or effects of institutionalized injustice.
- (c) Populist rage related to economic values. Some analysts (especially the left-oriented ones) argue that the anger of an affluent post-industrial society like the American one is inextricably linked to cultural identity which would be more intense than economic dissatisfaction. They are among those who are still wondering how Trumps victory was possible in the 2016 election. But they forget that populist anger about economic values was the catalyst that sparked the American Revolution in 1776. In 1773 American patriots in Boston destroyed a whole load of tea from China to protest against the taxes imposed by the British Empire.
Then in the nineteenth century populist rage related to economic reasons cemented itself in the American prairie among farmers. Those farmers were angered by foreign and impersonal forces that required the rapid industrialization of the economy and the modification of their patriarchal society (e.g. the expansion of the railway networks and banking system that kept farmers captive through loan schemes). Later in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries the economically determined populist rage manifested itself to the blue-collar workers from small towns laid off from industry and mining. Also it expanded to some white-collar workers fired from large companies like IBM Microsoft or Boeing as a result of outsourcing the software programming and engineering jobs to countries like Russia and India. Eventually these forgotten people" from the flyover states" secured Trumps victory in the 2016 presidential election.
3. Rage a predetermined phenomenon?
The year 2016 and years that followed have brought some new features in the mass psychology.
- (a) Donald Trump an angry Conservative President. During his 2016 presidential campaign Trump detached himself from the other Republican candidates by a specific extremely aggressive attitude disdained not so much by his opponents in the Democratic Party but by many of his colleagues in the Republican Party. Well I think ... Im angry" Trump told CNN. Im angry and a lot of other people are angry too at how incompetently our country is being run." He continued As far as Im concerned anger is okay. Anger and energy is what this country needs." As it turned out the future president understood anger well and he was going to make his voters feel fantastic and keep them energized.
- (b) Antifa an angry leftist-anarchist movement. The main characteristic of these autonomous groups and individuals is the direct action through conflicts triggered both online and in real life. Antifa rose to prominence in 2017. The Antifa groups engage in a variety of protest tactics which include digital activism property damage physical violence and harassment against those whom they identify as fascist racist or on the far-right perceived to be generally the Trumps supporters. As self-declared anti-capitalists they focus on far-right and white supremacist ideologies directly rather than through electoral means.
The social rage of todays America often betrays the impatience and ingratitude of an overly spoiled society. Countless clashes of anger between religious conservatives and secular liberals seem to be permanent. On the other hand the partisan energy of the American electorate can be viewed as a positive development. In any case the proverbial American pragmatism would not allow so much energy to be wasted if there were not for a satisfactory possibility of reward. After all Americas efficiency lies also in the practical use of a so negatively perceived feeling such as rage.
NOTE - A version of the article was published in MEDIUM.
TIBERIU DIANU has published several books and a host of articles on law politics and post-communist societies. He currently lives and works in Washington DC and can be followed on MEDIUM.
*****
Many of us live with the impression that recently more precisely starting from 2016 during and after Donald Trumps presidential campaign American society has become too negativistic when it burst into repeated fits of rage.
Is rage essentially a negative phenomenon? Is rage a recent phenomenon? Is rage predetermined by the current president? Lets try to find some answers to these questions.
1. Rage a negative phenomenon?
Psychology studies show us that rage is a very dense form of communication and that it contains more quickly more information than many other types of emotions.
Many episodes of rage take the form of restricted conversations that rarely degenerate into physical altercations. They tend to improve the negative situations by solving them later not by exacerbation.
In many cases the same studies show the expression of rage makes the conflicting parties more likely to listen to one another to discuss more sincerely and to accommodate as far as possible the problems of the other.
Many people in a ratio of 3 to 1 declared themselves happier after releasing their negative energies on other people in the sense that they felt more energetic and optimistic about their future. Also their target persons in a ratio of 2 to 1 agreed that anger attacks helped them to understand the signals to listen more carefully in the future and eventually to change their behavior.
Subsequent studies have found other benefits. Rage motivates us to solve difficult tasks. We become more creative when we are angry because anger helps us to reinforce the solutions we have ignored.
2. Rage a recent phenomenon?
America has always been an angry nation. We are a country born of revolution. American history is constantly marked by episodes in which the aggrieved parties have settled their differences with weapons not through conversation.
We can say therefore that there is a social rage" in society as a component of the nations genetic code. Cultural political and economic changes engender tensions that produce mutations in the social environment. As a result there are just as many forms of public rage generated and accentuated by the new target conditions.
- (a) Conservative rage related to traditional and moral-biblical values. In an earlier period rage was unleashed by actions of state secession (Civil War of 1861-1865) triggered by the southern democrats. President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated for being considered a traitor to his race." Then the feeling of rage was manifested through anti-Darwinist demonstrations in schools. Later on it continued in the 1960s with anti-communist activism on university campuses during the Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwaters election campaigns and with Rush Limbaughs broadcasts from the mid-1980s. Specific reasons included: segregation traditional marriage and anti-abortion.
- (b) Liberal rage related to social and cultural values. In the beginning liberal rage poured into the original sin" of slavery (from a Christian perspective). In 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe published her anti-slavery novel Uncle Toms Cabin. But modern liberals have become almost exclusively secular. The secular liberal rage also generated by the Western European atheistic political culture spilled over into American society in the 1960s. Specific reasons included: womens emancipation anti-war sentiment racism and environmental pollution. Also the rage of modern liberals tends to enclave itself in marginal elite causes such as animal protection and transgenderism. All these reasons are considered by liberals as causes or effects of institutionalized injustice.
- (c) Populist rage related to economic values. Some analysts (especially the left-oriented ones) argue that the anger of an affluent post-industrial society like the American one is inextricably linked to cultural identity which would be more intense than economic dissatisfaction. They are among those who are still wondering how Trumps victory was possible in the 2016 election. But they forget that populist anger about economic values was the catalyst that sparked the American Revolution in 1776. In 1773 American patriots in Boston destroyed a whole load of tea from China to protest against the taxes imposed by the British Empire.
Then in the nineteenth century populist rage related to economic reasons cemented itself in the American prairie among farmers. Those farmers were angered by foreign and impersonal forces that required the rapid industrialization of the economy and the modification of their patriarchal society (e.g. the expansion of the railway networks and banking system that kept farmers captive through loan schemes). Later in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries the economically determined populist rage manifested itself to the blue-collar workers from small towns laid off from industry and mining. Also it expanded to some white-collar workers fired from large companies like IBM Microsoft or Boeing as a result of outsourcing the software programming and engineering jobs to countries like Russia and India. Eventually these forgotten people" from the flyover states" secured Trumps victory in the 2016 presidential election.
3. Rage a predetermined phenomenon?
The year 2016 and years that followed have brought some new features in the mass psychology.
- (a) Donald Trump an angry Conservative President. During his 2016 presidential campaign Trump detached himself from the other Republican candidates by a specific extremely aggressive attitude disdained not so much by his opponents in the Democratic Party but by many of his colleagues in the Republican Party. Well I think ... Im angry" Trump told CNN. Im angry and a lot of other people are angry too at how incompetently our country is being run." He continued As far as Im concerned anger is okay. Anger and energy is what this country needs." As it turned out the future president understood anger well and he was going to make his voters feel fantastic and keep them energized.
- (b) Antifa an angry leftist-anarchist movement. The main characteristic of these autonomous groups and individuals is the direct action through conflicts triggered both online and in real life. Antifa rose to prominence in 2017. The Antifa groups engage in a variety of protest tactics which include digital activism property damage physical violence and harassment against those whom they identify as fascist racist or on the far-right perceived to be generally the Trumps supporters. As self-declared anti-capitalists they focus on far-right and white supremacist ideologies directly rather than through electoral means.
The social rage of todays America often betrays the impatience and ingratitude of an overly spoiled society. Countless clashes of anger between religious conservatives and secular liberals seem to be permanent. On the other hand the partisan energy of the American electorate can be viewed as a positive development. In any case the proverbial American pragmatism would not allow so much energy to be wasted if there were not for a satisfactory possibility of reward. After all Americas efficiency lies also in the practical use of a so negatively perceived feeling such as rage.
NOTE - A version of the article was published in MEDIUM.
TIBERIU DIANU has published several books and a host of articles on law politics and post-communist societies. He currently lives and works in Washington DC and can be followed on MEDIUM.
*****