Mad As Hell

Brendan Steinhauser was watching Rick Santelli on Squawk Box, listening to the CNBC editor’s now-legendary rant following the 2009 bailout of the financial sector that ended with his call for a “Chicago Tea Party” outside of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Steinhauser thought it sounded like a good idea, so he and other activists from Freedomworks did tap into that rage to organize the Taxpayer March on Washington in 2009. Reflecting on the moment, Steinhauser recalls how political anger was just one step toward what he hoped would be lasting political change.

Anger seems to be bubbling over all over the world today. Terrorist attacks in Europe, hate crimes in the US, and populist leaders everywhere spouting nationalist slogans that just a few years ago would have been unthinkable. Writer Pankaj Mishra traces the roots of contemporary political rage back to a surprising source: the 18th century Enlightenment.  

There’s a lot of vitriol out there these days.  Partisan sniping on social media, screaming matches on cable news, and early morning tweetstorms from certain elected officials. Frankly, it’s exhausting. And also infuriating, blood-boiling, and  maddening — so why can’t we let it go?  Could we, as a nation, be addicted to anger? That’s what science fiction writer and astrophysicist David Brin thinks. In fact, he wrote an open letter to addiction researchers and psychologists, asking them to investigate America’s epidemic of self-righteous indignation.