https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/america-enraged-mark-tapson/
One thing Americans can presumably all agree on in our current cold civil war is that civility, mutual if grudging respect, and rational if testy debate in our political discourse have all been replaced by a hair-trigger performative outrage, the scorched-earth warfare of cancel culture, and even occasional violence. It’s difficult to remember that there was a time when even acerbic antagonists like William Buckley and Gore Vidal could trade barbs onstage without hurling chairs at each other and inciting nationwide rioting. What has happened to us? How did we come to this point? And is this state of rage destined to be a permanent feature of our cultural and political landscape?
Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars and author of the essential 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project, has addressed these questions incisively in a must-read, brand new book titled Wrath: America Enraged. He agreed to answer some questions about the book.
Mark Tapson: Mr. Wood, what is the “new anger,” and what is the difference between anger and wrath in a political context?
Peter Wood: “New anger” is show-off anger, the display of someone who expects to be admired for the performance or to boast about it afterwards: anger mixed with self-delight. New anger contrasts to the older ethic of trying to master your anger and not to let it master you. Through much of American history, giving free vent to anger was regarded as a sign of weakness and immaturity. We admired the man or woman who, when provoked, found ways to handle the situation without descending into rage. Of course, that kind of self-control often failed, at which point brawls erupted. Those who brawled in public or in private, however, were not regarded as good people. Those who turned to anger too quickly or too often were shamed.
“New anger” became a recognizable force in American life in the 1950s, though it was at first a trend confined to avant garde parts of society: the beat generation, early adepts of Freudian psychoanalysis, and people reading French existentialist novels. From these seeds grew the counterculture of the sixties, and then the disillusioned anger of the Big Chill 1970s. I am collapsing a lot of history into a few sentences. The breakdown of the older ideals of emotional self-control and their replacement by a new ethic of emotional expressiveness didn’t happen overnight or all at once or equally in all sectors of society. Fifteen years ago I spent a whole book (A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now) to describe the slow progression of new anger into the position it now has of cultural dominance. I’m mindful that whole generations have grown up for whom there is nothing “new” about “new anger.” It is all they have ever experienced unless they have been immersed in the world of Turner Classic Movies, where you can glimpse a world ruled by different emotional norms.
