Reasonable, decent people should be really angry about how angry everybody is.
In today’s America, there really is no good excuse for mass anger. So the mass anger we see from left, right and center is so out of line that it should really make us mad.
Oh, and everybody else should just shut up when they insist that anybody else shut up. I mean, just shut up already.
Let’s first consider the anger. In America today, materially speaking, life is good. Damn good.
As I’ve reported elsewhere, household incomes are actually higher than they were when people were celebrating Ronald Reagan’s booming mid-1980s economy. Meanwhile, inflation-adjusted prices of basic foodstuffs such as eggs and milk are substantially lower; gasoline costs the same; and of course electronics and tech-related daily-life aids and entertainment are dramatically less expensive. Likewise, modern technology allows us to do so many chores so much more quickly than ever that we should have more, not less, discretionary time available.
If you have a TV in every room of your house, don’t complain about being in debt. You chose your own debt. If your household has as many cars as people old enough for a license, you’re not poor. If your children spend most of their weekends at the mall and spend money every time, you’re not suffering financially.
Where many individuals or communities do suffer more than they did in 1986, the fault often isn’t some externally imposed burden but individual failings. If you get yourself addicted to illegal narcotics, that’s your fault. If you have a broken home because you “ran around” on your spouse, that’s your fault. Government didn’t do that to you. Society didn’t do that to you. You did it. So why are you angry at anybody else?
Maybe you’re angry that somebody has a different opinion than you. Grow up. Either listen to the other’s opinion and try at least to understand it, or engage with it respectfully to try to change the other’s mind, or else just ignore it. But don’t try to shout it down or shut it down. Don’t ask authorities to protect you from it. Don’t say the other has no right to an opinion that offends you, especially if you demand the right to yell at the other about how wrong he is.
Hey, you liberals who deliberately try to “disrupt” Republican town hall meetings: Respectfully airing views is fine, but if you infringe on somebody else’s right to speak, then go to jail, go directly to jail and do not pass “go.” You deserve it.
Hey, you Trump fans who can’t listen to a single word against Trump’s behavior, even a thoughtfully expressed one, without unleashing insults or expletives: Don’t be a baboon. Try re-entering the human race.
This isn’t just about politics. If you are, say, an Alabama fan who automatically hates Auburn fans at the Iron Bowl just because they’re Auburn fans – well, you have serious problems. Ditto for Yankees and Red Sox, Packers and Bears. Take a powder. Buy a chill pill. Get a life.
We are Americans, living in the most wonderful country on Earth, in what is probably the greatest time ever to be alive. Even the poorest Americans have a social safety net. The middle class, by historical standards, has standards of living higher than probably 98 percent of humans who ever lived.
Our land is beautiful. Our rivers, lakes and bays are as clean as they’ve been since before the industrial revolution. Our drinking water is usually so safe that we take it for granted. Our air is easily breathable.
Our neighborhoods, too, are better: Even a recent uptick in crime (not “carnage”) leaves crime rates at levels so low that Americans would have prayed for such safety in the 1970s and 1980s.
Medicines are remarkable; once-feared diseases are almost eradicated. Life expectancy has risen for 22 of the past 23 years. And quality of life — people physically and mentally active well into their 80s or even 90s, with at least reasonable financial means to enjoy it — is better for a greater number of “senior citizens” than ever before. (Eighty is the new 60!)
On an on goes the litany of blessings. Yet all we hear and see are snarls. Snarls, for no good reason.
So keep the snarls to yourself. Keep your expletives to yourself. Just shut up.
Oh, and please have a really nice day.
Quin Hillyer is a former Associate Editorial Page Editor of the Washington Examiner.
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