Why Are People So Angry?

I am baffled by the reign of anger that seems to be overwhelming some people today who are getting a lot of attention as we move to elect a new president on November 3. One can read and hear in the media that they are angry over systemic racism, misogynism, immigration, pollution, police brutality, and probably quite literally a dozen or so more labels to catch and explain their anger. They are, indeed, very unhappy. They tend to blame all these ills on President Trump, so they aim their anger and rocks and fireworks and laser beam lights at the police which represent authority and so the government and so the current President.

Whatever you may think of Trump, divinely appointed to save the nation or a common, lying, criminal looking after himself and his cronies, he isn’t to blame for the great sadness in the nation. People have been for or against racism, women, abortions, the environment, immigrants, etc. etc. long before Trump appeared on the scene and was elected president in 2016. He has, for better or worse, by his actions, crystallized the immense sadness and anger and brought our attention to so much that is wrong, and, conversely, so much that is right in our nation and its people.

Some, like Antifa (anti-fascist movement), are really angry and mad and I kind of feel two ways towards them: disgusted with their self-serving and riotous behavior of a spoiled generation; sorry for them for being so duped into thinking they are right, when for the most part they are largely self-righteous and abysmally politically correct servants marching and rioting in lockstep to the beat set for them by Marxism and socialism.

They are not by and large the poor or unenfranchised who demand more from the rich, although there is a strain of that running through the rioters, and especially the looters. They are not simply blacks wanting reparations and a fair shake from whites. I know some blacks, for example, who want no part of the Black Lives Movement which is riddled with Marxists as their leaders. Look it up on your browser. Don’t just take my word for it.

The young men and women I see moving through the streets of Portland, Seattle, New York and other of the great and small metropolises of our country are mostly white, and from the way they dress, act, and talk, middle class in their demeanor. I know, I know.

“How in the world Larry do you determine what social class they belong to from such slender and anecdotal evidence?”

So, I did a bit of research online, looking for some facts and analysis. I love how journalists get straight to the point, unlike us historians who love to write books that go one forever it seems. Guilty as charged. But back to journalists. One journalist succinctly described Antifa members as largely “privileged white dudes” who have bought into the socialist/communist agenda. And if you look at a composite picture of about fifteen or twenty arrested recently in Portland, they are all white and they look pretty angry. But, then again, mug shots of newly arrested or jailed people are not exactly your chummy selfies with your bud.

Who are antifites? Antifa is a “quintessentially white leftist group” whose goals are “to destroy the systems of government, abolish the police [and] end capitalism.” It has its roots in “the far left of the English punk scene in the 1980s,” and even further back in the anti-fascist movements in fascist Italy and Germany in the 1930s and 1940s (think Mussolini and Hitler; if you’ve never heard of them, get on the Internet; better, buy a book; even better, take a history course someplace online; lots of them online these days).

What do they do? Watch the news any day or night. Check out what’s going on in New York City, Seattle, Portland, and how about on the street right outside the White House on the night when President Trump gave his Republican acceptance speech at the White House and some of his guests like Senator Rand Paul and his wife were accosted trying to get to their car after the speech.

What are they? Try generally far Left, anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist and subscribing to anarchism, communism, Marxism, social democracy, and socialism. Antifites accuse Trump of being a fascist demagogue who threatens the existence of America’s pluralistic, multi-racial democracy. They have made common cause with other associations like BLM which claims systemic racism and police brutality are the principal descriptors of what is holding black people still in bondage.

I looked for some good quotes to finish this read. None that I read by Antifites had any short bite or meaning; they were all wordy and self-indulgent. But I did find a couple of good ones not from Antifites.
“Take away a nation’s heritage, and they are more easily persuaded.” Karl Marx.
“The fascists of the future will be called anti-fascists.” Winston Churchill, proving again that while Marx was smart Churchill was smarter.

Pubished as “Why are people so angry these days” in The Tuscaloosa News, Sunday August 29 2020.