{"id":70360,"date":"2021-07-31T17:02:40","date_gmt":"2021-07-31T22:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=70360"},"modified":"2021-07-31T17:02:40","modified_gmt":"2021-07-31T22:02:40","slug":"70360","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=70360","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

BLUF:
\nThe odd election of 2020 does not sit well with a great many Americans. They are not in the mood to engage in the equivalent theatrics of Ben Cohen\u2019s mockery of Bush or the pussyhat feminists\u2019 sneers against Trump.<\/em><\/p>\n

President Biden is, in their view, a hollow figure not even worth mention. Their complaint lies far deeper as they see the purposeful destruction of American values by an elite that bullies and derides them.<\/em><\/p>\n

What will come of this? How might revolt manifest itself? I hope it will be a successful recapture of key institutions, perhaps beginning with the schools. But the political elite that prefers to scorn the common people for wanting a say in their government is playing an awfully risky game. Despair breeds wrath and that fire, once ignited, will engulf us all.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

OLD GLORY, NEW ANGER<\/a><\/p>\n

America is no longer just angry. We have become a nation of wrath. It is a risky emotional condition, recognizable by our desire to obliterate our opponents. Wrath doesn\u2019t seek reconciliation. It wants revenge. Nor does wrath want to accommodate what it can\u2019t control. It wants to rub the slate clean.<\/p>\n

There is a wrathfulness of the political left, stemming from visceral hatred of Trump and his supporters. But as the left is ascendant in the seats of power, it can pursue its effort to extinguish its opposition via the instruments of state. The wrathfulness on the political right is another story. Wrath reaches its zenith when people feel not just abused but hopeless in the pursuit of any redress. American wrath right now is the white-hot anger of the millions of people who have concluded the country is being destroyed and they have no legal redress.<\/p>\n

I have been writing about anger in America for close to 20 years. That is a period that encompasses the \u2018I hate George W. Bush\u2019 manifestos; Revd Wright\u2019s \u2018God damn America\u2019 sermons;\u00a0Obama\u2019s<\/a> \u2018They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren\u2019t like them\u2019; Hillary\u2019s \u2018basket of deplorables\u2019 characterized by \u2018racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic\u2019 views; Trump Derangement Syndrome; the 2020 George\u00a0Floyd \u2018peaceful protests\u2019; and the QAnon Shaman at the January 6 Capitol riot.<\/p>\n

All of these are instances of American rage, specifically from its political branch. But the quality of the anger differs from one instance to another. Anger against George W. Bush, first ignited by his disputed 2000 victory over Al Gore, was vehement but theatrical. Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry\u2019s Ice Cream, for example, mounted a\u00a0national \u2018Pants on Fire\u2019 tour in 2004, exhibiting a 12-foot effigy of Bush with fake flames shooting out of his trousers.<\/p>\n

The pussyhatted protesters at Trump\u2019s inaugural in 2017 had some similar goal of deflating a man they saw as pompous and overbearing, but the tone of the protest shifted from exaggerated disrespect to something approaching bitter enmity.<\/p>\n

Both are instances of what I call \u2018new anger\u2019, a self-congratulatory, look-at-me styling of the old emotion. New anger is a post-World War Two phenomenon that followed from the breakdown of an older ethic. For centuries American culture had upheld an ideal of self-control, in which easy resort to anger was stigmatized as a weakness and a personal fault. The arrival on these shores of Freudian analysis, emphasizing that repressed anger causes neurosis, and the simultaneous importation of the existentialist idea that unleashing anger is the path toward finding your authentic self, opened the door to this emotional rewiring of the American temperament.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The transformation took decades to move from sophisticated elites to common culture because emotional patterns are set in childhood, and relinquishing one set of parental expectations and replacing it with its exact opposite took several generations. But by the turn of the century, new anger was dominant and the older edicts of anger held in check were vanquished in mainstream America. In my 2006 book,\u00a0A Bee in the Mouth<\/em><\/a>, I warned that Americans would pay a significant price for this trade. Our personal lives would be impoverished and our political life would become chaotic. But my telescope was\u00a0not powerful enough to see the details. Anger itself is almost as common as air. It is one of the ambient conditions of human social life. Politics and every other endeavor that involves people doing things together always entails toes stepped on, noses out of joint, and other metaphoric bits of anatomy pummeled. You can\u2019t tell a story, let alone hold a dinner party, without drawing on currents of subterranean anger.<\/p>\n

But its ubiquity doesn\u2019t mean anger is\u00a0everywhere the same. Anger can be bent into all sorts of shapes. From \u2018new anger\u2019, we have descended into wrath. The stairway of that descent has too many steps to recount here, but I can give a pretty telling example or two of what the descent looks like.<\/p>\n

Feelings about the 9\/11 attacks were still running high in May 2002 when country singer Toby Keith released \u2018Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)\u2019.<\/p>\n

Keith\u2019s song was seemingly ubiquitous and can rightly be considered the embodiment of popular sentiment of the time. It begins in a quiet, almost elegiac tone:<\/p>\n

\u2018American girls and American guys
\n<\/em>We\u2019ll always stand up and salute
\n<\/em>We\u2019ll always recognize
\n<\/em>When we see Old Glory flying
\n<\/em>There\u2019s a lot of men dead
\n<\/em>So we can sleep in peace at night when we lay down our head.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

But the second verse pivots to a gravelly snarl as Keith recounts his father\u2019s fierce patriotism:<\/p>\n

\u2018My daddy served in the army
\n<\/em>Where he lost his right eye but he flew a flag out in our yard
\n<\/em>Until the day that he died\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

If the sound and the lyrics of \u2018The Angry American\u2019 don\u2019t instantly play in your head, you are either too young to remember that time or you spent it too immersed in reading Katha Pollitt \u2018Put Out No Flags\u2019\u00a0editorials<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0Nation<\/em>\u00a0to register the emotional tenor of popular culture.<\/p>\n

Keith\u2019s song has some silly imagery about the Statue of Liberty \u2018shakin\u2019 her fist\u2019, and mother freedom \u2018ringin\u2019 her bell\u2019, but the details don\u2019t matter as much as Keith\u2019s\u00a0overpowering conviction that America is righteously angry over the terrorist attack. The climax of the song comes after several lines in which he quiets his tone and reins in his vehemence (\u2018Justice will be served and the battle will rage\u2019) only to unleash his full-on contempt, the point at which his audiences erupted into thunderous cheers: \u2018Cause we\u2019ll put a boot in your ass \/ It\u2019s the American way.\u2019 \u2018The Angry American\u2019 might be called vulgar, jingoist, or trite, but it is the epitome of assertive cultural confidence: a war anthem, rather than a lament.<\/p>\n

Among President Trump\u2019s last acts in office, on January 13 \u2014 the day Congress was busy impeaching him \u2014 was to bestow the National Medal of the Arts on Toby Keith. That might be the first national medal forged in the furnace of the new anger on the right. Keith\u2019s song made it crystal-clear that he proudly endorsed our national anger, personally identified with it, and had not the least doubt we were strong enough to prevail.<\/p>\n

After \u2018Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American)\u2019 Keith had many successful country hits but with no other songs that, to borrow his phrase, lit up our world \u2018like the Fourth of July\u2019. Today, however, he has a\u00a0new song<\/a>, \u2018Happy Birthday America\u2019, that is as much of our current moment as \u2018The Angry American\u2019 was of the post 9\/11 catharsis. \u2018Happy Birthday America\u2019 is another flag-themed declaration, but in a disheartened tone that veers towards cynicism:<\/p>\n

\u2018Happy birthday America
\n<\/em>It\u2019s the Fourth of July
\n<\/em>I get to wake up in your freedom
\n<\/em>But sometimes I wonder why.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018Seems like everybody\u2019s pissin\u2019
\n<\/em>On the red, white and blue
\n<\/em>Happy birthday America
\n<\/em>Whatever\u2019s left of you.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Keith recites America\u2019s contributions in the two world wars and then turns to the disdain school children direct towards the country:<\/p>\n

\u2018Now your children want to turn you in
\n<\/em>To something other than yourself
\n<\/em>They burn your flag in their city streets
\n<\/em>More than anybody else\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Ungrateful Europeans and derisive domestic activists lead a litany of laments Keith has for a country he now sees as \u2018broken down\u2019.<\/p>\n

His voice in this song is querulous and complaining. The opening verses are set against a mournful organ. When Keith hinges at the second verse to a guitar-backed protest sound and breaks out into his characteristic vocal swagger, he is still somehow subdued.<\/p>\n

\u2018Happy Birthday America\u2019 isn\u2019t really a protest song. It belongs to the less celebrated genre of resignation music. Think of the Band\u2019s \u2018The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down\u2019, where resentment and hopelessness mingle with nostalgia.<\/p>\n

Toby Keith isn\u2019t the only country singer\/songwriter voicing this new despair. Perhaps the outstanding example is Aaron Lewis, whose \u2018Am I the Only One?\u2019\u00a0weaves together<\/a>\u00a0many of the resentments that red-state Americans feel toward the prevailing culture.<\/p>\n

\u2018Am I the only one, still willin\u2019 to bleed
\n<\/em>Or take a bullet for bein\u2019 free
\n<\/em>Screamin\u2019, \u2018What the fuck!\u2019 at my TV
\n<\/em>For tellin\u2019 me, are you tellin\u2019 me
\n<\/em>That I\u2019m the only one, still willin\u2019 to fight
\n<\/em>For my love of the red and white
\n<\/em>And the blue, burnin\u2019 on the ground
\n<\/em>As a statue\u2019s comin\u2019 down in a town near you
\n<\/em>Watchin\u2019 the threads of Old Glory come undone
\n<\/em>Am I the only one?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Lewis performs this mournful song solo with his guitar, and in live performances gives a preamble in which he explains his bafflement at the nation\u2019s demise (actually he says, \u2018You have to be scratchin\u2019 your head saying, \u201cWhat the fuck is going on?\u201d\u2019) The opening lyric is actually four questions:<\/p>\n

\u2018Am I the only one here tonight,
\n<\/em>Shakin\u2019 my head and think\u2019 somethin\u2019 ain\u2019t right?
\n<\/em>Is it just me? Am I losin\u2019 my mind?
\n<\/em>Am I standin\u2019 on the edge of the end of time?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

The answers are plainly \u2018no\u2019. Aaron Lewis realizes his new song is something exceptional: \u2018This is what I am supposed to do. God put me on Earth to do this shit right here.\u2019<\/p>\n

Toby Keith\u2019s rage at those \u2018pissin\u2019 on the red, white and blue\u2019 is undercut by his waking up demoralized and seeing America in the past tense. Aaron Lewis\u2019s \u2018thinkin\u2019 somethin\u2019 ain\u2019t right\u2019 sits beside his feeling of being isolated and alone, \u2018watchin\u2019 the threads of Old Glory come undone\u2019. These songs capture that borderland between despondency and revolt. They are the opening, dissonant chords of the music of wrath.<\/p>\n

The odd election of 2020 does not sit well with a great many Americans. They are not in the mood to engage in the equivalent theatrics of Ben Cohen\u2019s mockery of Bush or the pussyhat feminists\u2019 sneers against Trump.<\/p>\n

President Biden is, in their view, a hollow figure not even worth mention. Their complaint lies far deeper as they see the purposeful destruction of American values by an elite that bullies and derides them.<\/p>\n

What will come of this? How might revolt manifest itself? I hope it will be a successful recapture of key institutions, perhaps beginning with the schools. But the political elite that prefers to scorn the common people for wanting a say in their government is playing an awfully risky game. Despair breeds wrath and that fire, once ignited, will engulf us all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BLUF: The odd election of 2020 does not sit well with a great many Americans. They are not in the mood to engage in the equivalent theatrics of Ben Cohen\u2019s mockery of Bush or the pussyhat feminists\u2019 sneers against Trump. President Biden is, in their view, a hollow figure not even worth mention. Their complaint … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70360"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70361,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70360\/revisions\/70361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}