Rage And America

A recent Politico expose on the year anniversary of Donald Trump's election presents a stark reminder for those paying attention that the current President of the United States was not elected solely on his merits, but also because America's new number one pastime seems to be using the vote as a way to express communal rage.

It is a nearly worn out trope that the American political process has been warped by a rising tide of rage. Ethnic rage as shown by the slow growth of the white supremacist Alt-Right, economic rage as seen in the voting patterns of those living in Pennsylvania or Michigan -- to make no mention of Occupy Wall Street -- rage over health care, gun control, police corruption, sexual assault, the direction of American politics both in general and specific, immigration, people not saying Merry Christmas, and on and on. I am not turning over new ground in suggesting that the American id has become enthralled in the service of resentment and fury. Americans seem angrier than at any point in living memory and more able and willing to share their collective aggreivement with one another in social settings.

While it is not news to suggest that contemporary America is a rage fueled nation, where personal resentment and anger dominate the landscape. But what is up for debate are the root causes of this period of great strain. While all are generally in agreement that there are many causes of our recent outbursts, but they are divided as to the main force propelling us down this path. Some argue that economic anxiety is the primary driving force behind this roiling fury. Others claim that the root cause is a toxic media environment whose constant diet of otherization has pushed a wedge between citizens. Still others point to a collapse of the social consensus, and the rise of new political norms that are signalling the dawning of a new American political era (or, perhaps harkening back to earlier eras democratic of disagreement.

Owing to the longue duree that historians deal with in their work, I am more inclined to see the recent outbreak of political and social angst as a regression to the mean of American political activity. Thomas Jefferson believed that the American republic was healthiest when the citizenry was occasionally driven to revolutionary fervor. Americans have long disdained migrants coming into their nation as criminals and drug addicts (and have frequently simply shifted their animus towards migrants from one ethnic group to the next as the complexion of American immigration has changed). The American Civil War -- arguably a near-fatal brush with the consequences of political alienation for the American state -- was fought as a result of Southern anger over abolitionist agitation against the institution of slavery and fears that the practice would be abolished by President Lincoln. Americans are not special when one examines the fractious nature of their politics and society for much of its history. The last seventy years of politics dominated by a post-war generation who understood the costs of unchecked anger and their children raised in an era of nearly unparalleled economic growth while simultaneously sheltered and threatened by the blanket of nuclear deterrence can be seen as an anomaly when viewed with an eye towards the scope of American history.

Americans are no more angry than their ancestors, but perhaps they are coming out of a long political coma. Issues that -- even as recently as five or ten years ago -- could be swept under the rug and ignored have come to the forefront of the American consciousness.