Six Reasons Why People are Mad (Hint: They've Every Right to Be)

“Black people need some peace, white people need some peace, and we're gonna have to fight, we're gonna have to struggle, we're gonna have to struggle relentlessly to bring about some peace, because the people that we're asking for peace, they're a bunch of megalomaniac warmongers and they don't even understand what peace means.” -- Fred Hampton

Here’s why people are angry.
1. Black people in the United States are still being targeted, brutalized and killed by police officers. Only in recent years have we begun to grasp the full extent of the terror visited upon our African-American brothers and sisters thanks to the advent of smart phones and police body cams. For every shocking video we see there are doubtless dozens of other incidents that go unrecorded. Imagine if you will how many people of color were regularly abused by officers of the law in the time before video cameras were readily available. I suppose there’s a sense among many that, after each new outrage that surely this has to be the last of it. There has been too much exposure, there’s greater sensitivity among law enforcement, lessons have been learned. It is white people who think this way. Meanwhile the oppressed continue to face the same fears of police -- the very people charged with protecting citizens. I remember as a middle school teacher being initially surprised to hear some of my African-American students speak of their lack of faith in our police and was then shocked as they detailed very good reasons why.

2. Racism in the age of Trump is alive and well and has enjoyed something of a rebirth. Trump’s open bigotry has made it feel safe for the worst knuckle-draggers in our society to crawl out from under their rocks and spew their venom. But we’ve also seen how proliferate racism is among mainstream society. Witness the recent video by the African American birdwatcher in Central Park. Note also the many other instances (again we obviously only see those caught on camera) when whites call the police on Black people for everything from barbecuing to jogging to carrying out a building inspection. In the wake of some of the successes of the Civil Rights Movement and the subsequent election of African-Americans to higher profile elective offices in the Seventies, it seemed that we might be entering a post racial society. The language of bigotry was deemed inappropriate for public consumption. One notorious word could not even be spoken any longer by whites. Sadly all we had done was to drive the hateful language and the bigots underground. With the tacit approval of Trump, they have re-emerged unafraid to inflict their hateful, hurtful language.

3. People are goddamned sick and tired of Trump. Many have been sick of him since before he was even inaugurated and began defiling the office of the presidency. There seem to be new depredations, new insults, new outrages, new acts of wanton ignorance and unimaginable stupidity coming out of the White House every day. To call it failed leadership is like saying that the Titanic's last crossing was bumpy. There is no leadership at all; instead there is a drive backwards. Gains made recently in such areas as environmental laws and social justice are being reversed or snuffed out. Incompetence and impotence are rife in the executive branch. Morality has given way to greed. People can live with a leader they disagree with and wait to try to oust him in the next election, but living with a narcissistic, sociopath is beyond unsettling, it is deleterious to the emotional health of a nation. You cannot reason with a delusional paranoid.

4. People are also sick and tired of Republicans in Congress and particularly in the Senate and most particularly Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell. We no longer have a loyal opposition. We have obstructionists whose sole raison d'etre is to further the aims of their party — the country be damned — and are unwilling to “reach across the aisle” for any reason but to give a metaphorical middle finger. They aid and abet Trump at every turn, being codependents to his megalomania. Meanwhile they comfort the rich and afflict the poor and ignore the will of the people on innumerable issues such as sensible gun control. They are a people without conscience and are every bit as responsible as Trump for the mess the country is in and the anger that has been percolating within it. They care a lot for guns and little for voting rights. They care a lot for corporations and wealthy donors and little for the disadvantaged. They look to revive the Gilded Age in America while promoting a laissez faire government that lives to feed its corporate overlords.

5. The coronavirus has brought death and illness to all parts of the country while at the same time depriving people of their inalienable right to pursue happiness. People cannot take vacations, cannot travel, cannot watch or attend sports events, go to restaurants, parks, theaters, beaches or shops. Millions are losing huge chunks of their income and their savings and small business have been devastated. Compounding matters are the idiots who deny the virulence of the disease and want to prematurely return to normal heedless of the consequent risk to human life. Thanks in large part to the Idiot-in-Chief the country lacks leadership (just as it lacked an effect response to the virus at the beginning when many lives could have been saved and much heartache averted). Some governors (Republicans again) are in denial about the dangers of the virus and are making matters worse by prematurely re-opening business and beaches. The mixed messages from what experts (a group of people that Trump and his ilk have no use for) say and what politicians allow is further confusing and confounding Americans. When government denies the empiricism of scientists and heeds only the needs of the wealthy, people justifiably  feel betrayed.

6. Americans are sick and tired of bad news. Some merely want normal. Others want normal and reforms. Others want normal and revolution. All of us seek something better. A cleansing of our government, of our police departments, of a culture that still gives license to our most bigoted and hateful voices. Some people are angry about what they perceive as rioting which is in fact demonstrating for justice, equality and an end to state-sponsored violence against people of color. It is amazing to me that anyone is surprised by or disappointed in the angry masses taking to the streets. It’s akin to complaining that someone who stubbed his toe has, in crying out in pain, disturbed you. What does one expect the aggrieved to do? Write a sternly worded letter to their congressman? Many Americans, particularly people of color, are in pain and crying out and I say it’s about damned time. Why are people angry? Who wouldn't be?