The Only Emotion We Should Be Feeling is Anger
Not only is it perfectly OK to be experiencing anger, but it’s the only emotion that will make us realize what truly went wrong.
There are many emotions flying around right now. Many of them are emotions that outside parties and interests are trying to foist upon us — whenever a call for togetherness is being primarily championed by mega-corporations already de facto responsible for controlling vast parts of our information intake, we have a moral obligation to be suspicious. It is also understandable to feel sadness and hopelessness, especially by those directly affected by the pandemic (and even those who may not be so affected, especially when, again, mega-corporations are carefully curating information to directly manipulate our emotions). Many even display an extremely disturbing and tone-deaf blasé attitude towards the pandemic, especially when already in positions of disparate wealth and privilege where quarantine has barely a noticeable effect on quality-of-life. But few dare validate any feelings of anger we may be experiencing.
Anger, as it turns out, is the only valid emotion we should be feeling.
Not to say that we should allow anger to override our rationality, and I would be remiss in not addressing the darker side of letting anger dictate actions. There is a reason why Star Wars has become such a global cultural force, and why it universally resonates when we associate the Emperor and the Dark Side with the greatest evil conceivable: let the hate flow through you. But there is a time and place for anger, and a way to channel it constructively. Right now, the United States in particular should be using the collective buried and repressed anger of its entire population to never forget exactly who and what is responsible for the scale and scope of this pandemic and the over 100,000+ deaths resulting from it.
On an individual scale, that person is of course current President Donald J. Trump. Trump has demonstrably, on record, dismantled former President Obama’s pandemic response measures, the same measures that protected this nation from the coronaviruses SARS and MERS, for the sake of his own ego, personality cult and accumulation of personal power. For that, he deserves nothing less than to be forcibly and permanently removed from power by the very people he’s supposed to serve and specifically denied the creature comforts he has grown to know as President, and it is nothing less than shameful that such demonstrations have yet to happen. But Trump is not alone. As I’ve argued before, Trump is a symptom, not the cause. The rest of our ire should be focused against the Republican Party as a whole, who has sold its soul to the proverbial devil that is Trump for the sole sake of mutual power accumulation. Trump didn’t invent racist and anti-American accusations against Obama’s very being; he merely seized upon that as a means to gain prominence with the increasingly white supremacist, pro-Apartheid, pro-1% Republicans. The real man pulling the strings, behind the curtain of the Party, Mitch McConnell, has been extremely active in shaping the reckless anti-government, anti-community and anti-people policies of the Trump administration. He’s not alone: there’s also the infamous Koch brothers and surviving Charles Koch in particular, who were responsible for practically anointing Trump as the Party Candidate in 2016 and has proudly maintained a family legacy that includes explicit collaboration with the Nazis during a time of active warfare against said regime that by all rational thought can only be defined as active treason. Then there’s the Rush Limbaughs, the Sean Hannitys, the Laura Ingrahams, the Ben Shapiros who even above Mitch McConnell de facto control the Republican Party through a sick, twisted and perverse form of populism from outside proper channels of the party itself that had been seen countless of times before: in fascist Argentina, in fascist Italy and of course Nazi Germany.
It is all of them who deserve the full wrath of our scorn and anger.
The end result of that scorn and anger should be, of course, peaceful and nonviolent. But it should also be made clear that none of these actors should be allowed to wield influence ever again. I’ve already described how to remove Trump from power peaceably and without having to wait for a second impeachment hearing that will never come, and I’ve described in the same breath how to apply the same to Mitch McConnell. As for those outside the party, they and their followers should be given nothing but shame. I’ve derided shame tactics in the past but I’ve also acknowledged, in that very same breath, that shaming does indeed have a time and place — and it richly does so in application to the Republican Party and its voting block. Do shame people out of voting for them. Remind them that this is the party that has killed their grandparents, their uncles and aunts and hundred thousand other Americans through motivations that can only be described as evil.
We can no longer afford to tolerate Trump and the Republicans. We must let our anger be known.
