Back in my running-around days, there would sometimes be a guy at the bar who was mad about something.\u00a0 Mad at the bartender, mad at a girl, mad at another guy, mad at the world.\u00a0 I remember telling friends that I don\u2019t understand Angry People.\u00a0 Drinking beer is supposed to be a happy thing.<\/p>\n
Now we have a whole nation of Angry People.\u00a0 And we can\u2019t even blame alcohol.<\/p>\n
A set of concurrent stresses has us on edge.\u00a0 Some tension is to be expected as we work through a pandemic, race issues, natural disasters, etc.\u00a0 As a nation, we\u2019ve been through a lot in 244 years.\u00a0 But it seems like 2020 is guilty of piling on.<\/p>\n
We can\u2019t be blamed for feeling under some pressure.\u00a0 But, oh, the anger.<\/p>\n
People at rallies, people at protests, commenters on-line, someone at a store in town.\u00a0 Everyone has an opinion and a lot of them want to hit you over the head with it.\u00a0 Passion can be a good thing, propelling us to necessary change.\u00a0 But when passion becomes clothed in hatred, sometimes with tints of violence, \u201cgood\u201d becomes a victim along with civility and decency.<\/p>\n
It is dispiriting to behold and wears one down.\u00a0 I find myself increasingly sad, sad for me, sad for us.\u00a0 So many things make me cringe.\u00a0 If you aren\u2019t worried about the state of the country we\u2019re turning over to our children, you have more optimism than I can muster.\u00a0 The loudest voices are getting more attention than they deserve.\u00a0 That is always true but, man, are they loud.<\/p>\n
Anger is all around.\u00a0 Thankfully, most of us live lives that are separate from our political selves.\u00a0 I am lucky to be able to have a home and job where I can escape the constant negativity.\u00a0 But not all of us do.\u00a0 Arguments are turning up in the workplace and within families.\u00a0 For some, there is no relief.<\/p>\n
Here we are in the richest country on Earth, blessed with resources and wealth that would be unimaginable in most times and places in history.\u00a0 One might expect the anger boiling over would be coming from the poorest, those struggling to pay rent and feed their children.\u00a0 But most of this daily rage comes from people who have it better than most people who have ever lived.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t even make sense.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the summer I read about little Appleton, Minnesota.\u00a0 Every Thursday at 4:30, a group called the Appleton Community Diversity Coalition planted American flags near City Hall.\u00a0 Then they would hold a small rally for \u201cOur America\u201d to support inclusion and oppose racism.<\/p>\n
Another group began showing up at the same time and setting up nearby.\u00a0 \u00a0Under a giant \u201cTrump 2020\u201d banner, they held their own rally protesting the protesters.\u00a0 This went on for weeks.\u00a0 For a regularly scheduled hour a few dozen otherwise normal human beings got together to yell at each other.\u00a0 How depressing it that?<\/p>\n
On a larger and scarier scale, my son is currently working a security job in Portland, Oregon.\u00a0 For months, large gatherings of groups sympathetic to Black Lives Matter have held marches.\u00a0 Groups of right-wing nationalists began coming to hold their own marches.\u00a0 It sounds like it was the same thing as Appleton only with a threat of violence hanging over.\u00a0 The right-wing guys really like carrying guns.\u00a0 It\u2019s a frightening brew of volatile ingredients.\u00a0 Do we worry about our son near that?\u00a0 Yes.<\/p>\n
We know social media plays a sizeable part in escalating the anger.\u00a0 Less and less people read a newspaper.\u00a0 In a newspaper, professional, committed journalists are vetted and edited by other professionals and transparently separated from the opinion section.\u00a0 Instead, people want to believe something they saw on Facebook that came from who knows where?<\/p>\n
I have a couple friends who I wouldn\u2019t have considered especially partisan before.\u00a0 Now they send me memes and video clips.\u00a0 They are getting regular doses of things that emanate from the direction of Fox News and sources righter and weirder than that.\u00a0 These messages share a notion that the \u201cother side\u201d is not only wrong, but stupid and immoral.<\/p>\n
Certainly, the current state of vitriol and constant temper has blame on all sides.\u00a0 But it can\u2019t help that for four years the White House has been occupied by a man whose primary skills are being angry and attacking others.\u00a0 The Office of the Presidency should be teaching young people dignity and honor.\u00a0 George Will wrote, \u201cMost Donald Trump utterances resemble turbid creeks that are silty at their sources and trickle away into mud.\u201d<\/p>\n
That last paragraph means that on the Journal website, this column will be met with disapproval by Jimmy Joe.\u00a0 Jimmy is a regular commenter there.\u00a0 In the past, if I have written anything mildly critical of the President, Jimmy would assert that I am wrong with some link to a far-right group to prove it.<\/p>\n
Jimmy Joe posts from an anonymous Facebook account.\u00a0 Anonymity is common in the e- world.\u00a0 Apparently, he is not committed enough to his beliefs to use his real identity.\u00a0 Hey, Jimmy Joe, there\u2019s my name at the top of this.\u00a0 What\u2019s yours?<\/p>\n
When I started school, we received a grade for \u201cdeportment.\u201d\u00a0 That was the teacher\u2019s way to let parents know how their child was behaving and whether they were acting decently to others.\u00a0 Right now, our nation grades a D at best in deportment.<\/p>\n
We know is that there are countries that are more than glad to see us act this way.\u00a0 Russian and Chinese bots amplify ugly messages on all sides and propel them farer and wider.\u00a0 Bad intentioned people in distant places aren\u2019t even interested in taking a side.\u00a0 They just want to see us continue to tear our country apart.\u00a0 That\u2019s proof right there that there are no winners in our ongoing squabbles.<\/p>\n
I am not claiming innocence here.\u00a0 I got into a heated debate with a buddy over a topic we both feel strongly about.\u00a0 At some point, it crossed over from debate to good old-fashioned argument.\u00a0 The next day I called my friend to offer an olive branch.\u00a0 I said that once we raised our voices, neither of us was listening.\u00a0 It became a total waste of our time.<\/p>\n
I want to close with saying we can do better.\u00a0 So many of the issues we are facing demand good, reasoned discussion among people of good will, sharing a goal of making this a better place.\u00a0 But I\u2019m not sure we can do better.\u00a0 As we face the election and the winter, I\u2019m not feeling hopeful.<\/p>\n
In Paul\u2019s first letter to Timothy, we are told, \u201cDon\u2019t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments. You know they cause quarrels. A servant of the Lord must not quarrel. Instead, he must be kind to everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s two thousand years old.\u00a0 Still sounds about right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[ad id=”113688″] Back in my running-around days, there would sometimes be a guy at the bar who was mad about something.\u00a0 Mad at the bartender, mad at a girl, mad at another guy, mad at the world.\u00a0 I remember telling friends that I don\u2019t understand Angry People.\u00a0 Drinking beer is supposed to be a happy …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weeds-by-randy-krzmarzick"],"aioseo_notices":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 10:35:19","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120277"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120278,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120277\/revisions\/120278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}