Western literature begins with anger. The first word of Homer’s Iliad in the original Greek is the word for rage: “Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles.” If history begins in the wilderness after Adam and Eve have been cast out of the mythical timelessness of Eden, then Biblical history too begins with an act of violent anger, the killing of Abel by his brother Cain. All emotions are contagious, but anger seems particularly so, and today it seems to be sweeping across the United States like wildfire through the dry tinder of some Western state. The media are of course fanning the flames, because the more riled up people become, the more they click on things. But what is the original source of all this anger? It masquerades as righteous anger against injustice, but the kind of anger most typical today is really a childish temper tantrum. Back when Trump was first elected in 2016, some of us were willing to believe that the anger was provoked by economic injustice, that it was ignited by the frustration of working class people whose cause had no recognition in a political system dominated by highly educated elites, and I still think that that was the source of the first spark.
January 20, 2023
January 20, 2023
January 20, 2023
Western literature begins with anger. The first word of Homer’s Iliad in the original Greek is the word for rage: “Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles.” If history begins in the wilderness after Adam and Eve have been cast out of the mythical timelessness of Eden, then Biblical history too begins with an act of violent anger, the killing of Abel by his brother Cain. All emotions are contagious, but anger seems particularly so, and today it seems to be sweeping across the United States like wildfire through the dry tinder of some Western state. The media are of course fanning the flames, because the more riled up people become, the more they click on things. But what is the original source of all this anger? It masquerades as righteous anger against injustice, but the kind of anger most typical today is really a childish temper tantrum. Back when Trump was first elected in 2016, some of us were willing to believe that the anger was provoked by economic injustice, that it was ignited by the frustration of working class people whose cause had no recognition in a political system dominated by highly educated elites, and I still think that that was the source of the first spark.