Never Before Has America Been So Angry

And I’ve lived in all (or part) of ten decades, so I know whereof I speak.

The news outlets, what’s left of them, don’t understand why the brazen public murder of a healthcare CEO spawned unheard of public support, including salaries, home addresses and photos of other CEOs in that business.

They can’t get their out-of-touch little distracted heads around how Kamala Harris could possibly lose the presidency to a lying, self-centered, criminally convicted opponent.

But there’s a reason, and all boils down to trust

Nobody trusts anyone anymore in America. Or outside the country, so far as international alliances are concerned. The ‘land of the free and the brave’ has shown itself to be a torturer of the helpless, a bully of weaker nations, a killer of civilians and an ally only when it pleases our circumstances. Whistleblowers who report our misdeeds are jailed, hounded into exile, or forced to find shelter in nations beyond our extradition treaties.

We don’t trust our overpaid and underinformed CEOs, state and national governments, banks, social media sites, healthcare systems, law enforcement agencies, Supreme Court, used car dealers, prisons, military, media (both print and online), big business, criminal justice systems, most of our neighbors, any of our politicians, and the Catholic Church.

And yet, most Republicans and Democrats are convinced that a win by their opponent will sink their way of life, for now and forever.

Trump supporters don’t expect the orange man to save them, they trust him to burn down the governmental house

Which no sane man, who cares about his country, would do.

But with Trump there is no care for anyone or anything other than himself. You’ll notice he’s not interested in building a dynasty. There will only be one Trump name among presidents and, if he takes the entire Republican Party down as he leaves office, so much the better. Simply a further proof of “Only I can do it.”

How on earth did we get to the point that we’re about to break up the furniture, to burn down the house?

Because we have no collective memory of times long gone. There are fewer and fewer survivors who actually remember the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. I was six years old when Japan struck Pearl Harbor, and ten when Frankling Roosevelt—the only president I had ever known—died.

Rachel Maddow on MSNBC wasn’t even born until 1973 and wasn’t a sentient political being until at least ten years later. So, that’s ’83 and, while there was incremental damage before that, the real destruction began with 1980 and the Reagan presidency. Rachel, bless her, is outraged by the Trump cabinet choices, which are not even close to the problem.

Sean Hannity, the top dog of what’s left of Fox News, born in ’61, and currently has his knickers in a twist over ‘Biden sabotaging Trump in his last days as president.’ Really? That’s as close as you come, Sean, to having a perspective?

I wrote a book fifteen years ago, called ‘Chop-Shop, the Deconstruction of America’

It had, and still has, very few readers because no one younger than about sixty even cares. They’re wrapped up in paying off their SUV and spending a holiday in Florida, while there still is a Florida. You can still get Chop-Shop at Amazon. Because no one (or at least not enough people) paid attention, I’m writing another at the moment, tentatively called ‘The End of the American Century, A Pre Mortem for the Rise of China, Rebuilding Our Republic.’ I expect no less than the overwhelming success of Chop-Shop, but who knows? It might gain some traction.

They tell me no one reads anymore. But at least, as an author, I lived the century I’m writing about. A premortem is different that a postmortem, in that the victim has not yet died. I happen to think our brief experiment with imperialism has run its course, and we screwed the opportunity up so badly that the next logical contestant is China. Perhaps they’ll be better at it. At least they have 5,000 years of cultural history, both good and bad, to look back upon.

We Americans were just too damn young, angry and untested. Anger in China is suppressed and, in much of the rest of the world, a death sentence.

In my view, Trump’s second term is a gift.

We worked long and hard to become angry enough to elect him the first time. And it was, at the time, a wake-up call that stunned America. It made me stroke my chin, because I’d seen it coming, and written about it coming, but not as an orange man. Certainly not this orange man.

Then Biden intervened, but he wasn’t strong enough to carry a second term, nor should he have been. We needed one more shot by the orange man. We weren’t yet all the way awake.

The orange man stamped his foot, denied he’s lost and went to work at his rallies to blame everyone else, pointing fingers, bellowing over crowd-size and firing up his outraged followers. One term was not enough. We needed him again, and we got him. Much to the joy of Sean and tears of Rachel, we got him.

Time comes along with a second term, time to fully vent the anger, and look at ourselves more dispassionately

Or, at least get a grip, while a grip still matters.

Furniture will be burnt, but not all the furnishings of our staggering republic. Decrees will be decreed, and some will stick, but not all. Heads will roll and laws passed by a captured congress, but not all heads and all laws. The orange man’s compliant Supreme Court will get him off the hook and safe from prison, but who cares, we all know O.J. Simpson murdered his wife.

So, the anger will die down in this second term, as all anger dies after school shootings, CEO assassinations, child abandonments and other instances of social injustice.

And the death of anger brings, unexpected consequences

The grip of the rich around the throats of the poor may loosen. The promises of political nonsense may be exposed, engendering (dare I say it?) a faint, early, and increasing breeze of bipartisanism. The environment may improve, ever so slightly, merely by the expired breath of national anger. Families may come together a bit and children listen to their parents, although that last may be a bridge too far.

But anger is exhausting, and America may find it’s had enough of it.

At least let’s hope.

But likely not, without an orange man’s second term.