Get Angry

As elections get closer, the “get angry and stay angry” movement heats up even more than usual. People on both sides of the political divide face an onslaught of verbiage designed to tighten chest muscles, grit teeth, raise blood pressure and get people fighting mad. Naturally, people on the left accuse the right of doing this, while the right accuses the left. In actuality both do it almost constantly.

Besides an almost endless parade of bloggers, which is a technical term for “writer who doesn’t get paid,” we have more organized anger machines. The right has Fox News, a non stop barrage of all the evil, irresponsible and insane things the left is doing to destroy the country, democracy and your way of life. Fox is the biggest, but not the only outlet for this bombardment. Rush Limbaugh makes a good living on the radio with rants against anything to the left of the KKK. However, I’m not familiar with the other sources because I’m not in their radar.

I used to be registered as a democrat, before I changed my registration to “Go Away and Leave Me Alone.” But, once they have your number, email, mailing address or even an old shirt they can wave in front of the bloodhounds, you never quite get away from them.

I must get a dozen emails a day, all of them telling me some horror story about how some republican is trying to turn us all into beggars or corporate slaves, while giving the one percent everything we own, including our first born. Rove appears in many of these, and to read them, one would assume that’s he’s competing with the devil for CEO of hell. Then there’s the governor of Wisconsin, who according to the emails is probably somewhat less trustworthy and likeable than a zombie.

Then there’s the letters. The basic message, and I’m sure it’s the same from the right, is that somewhere a terrible republican is going to defeat a noble and virtuous democrat unless I write a check right now.

Then there’s the rather depressing columns of Amy Goodman, who delights in predicting doom in myriad forms.

If you bother to listen to the broadcasts or read the mailers, you find that the people from the other party aren’t just folks with a different and erroneous view of the right way to run things. No, these folks are crooks, cheats, liars and likely closet ax murderers. Compared to these people Saddam Hussein was Mother Teresa.

Once they zero in on you, they keep the pressure up, pushing you further and further toward the famous Howard Beale statement, from the film, Network,: “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more.” Of course Beale was understood to be insane, but they want us to forget that.

Why do both sides spend the time and money to do this incitement? Apparently, first they want your vote. But, if you’re listening, they probably already have that. What’s left? They also want your money, and they know that if they make you angry enough, you’ll whip out your check book. And what do they do with the money? My guess is that they use it to make you even more angry so they can get even more of your money.