Tag: Rage

Read the article at HuffPo yesterday, got pissed and wrote something angry, then went to work. While at work I read some comments, though, admittedly, not all of them, and realized why so many people have a beef with HuffPo. I’m not trying to throw HuffPo under the bus, writing in anger leads to this, and I wrote in anger and put too much trust into a single source. Just because you are using a BIG NAME for a source doesn’t mean that source is right, they are just as likely to misinterpret something as you are. That is human. But there is a difference between misinterpreting and deliberately misconstruing, and since our political guard is always up about deception, and since many of us are partisans, we often frame things within our own pre-made narrative. All of these things I have been guilty of, but who among us can plead innocent among such charges?

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Today I was at a retail store and something I’ve never seen before happened.  Mind you, I’ve seen riots in the 60’s.  Killings.  Protesters shooting it out with the police and holding a courthouse under seige for a week until the National Guard came in.  But I’ve not seen a lynch mob spontaneously erupt until today.  Someone mentioned the catastrophe in the Gulf.  Someone else said that the BP Oil Execs should all be killed.  Over 2 dozen people in that store all stopped what they were doing and began to agree.  Someone said that if the government won’t kill them, the people of the United States should rise up and do it themselves.  This got a lot of suddenly riled up people who only 30 seconds ago were quietly shopping to agree quite loudly and vocally.  “Yeah!  We should go down there and kill every goddamned one of them!”  someone shouted and everyone agreed.

There was an 80 year old man agreeing.  So were a couple of little old ladies.  Young people and old, people from all walks of life were suddenly gathered around the checkout stand and they were all talking about the Gulf Catastrophe and what it meant and how they not only had had enough of the government kowtowing to the corporations but “goddamnit if the Government won’t execute them, we Americans should!”

This wasn’t in the middle of rural teabag country, this was in a Seattle suburb and I was surrounded by mostly left leaning, ordinary American citizens who had suddenly found that everyone else felt the same way they did and everyone in that store was PISSED.

No, Pissed doesn’t do their mood justice.  They were outraged and FURIOUS and THEY WANTED BLOOD.  They wanted the BP executives DEAD.

I thought to myself: so this is what a lynch mob looks like.

Now normally, I’d be aghast.   But I remembered what Ghandi said.  He said that his non-violent methods would have never worked against the fascists.  He was right then and it’s still true today.  Peace and Love are NOT going to save our planet from these monsters, these psychopaths who have risen to the top of the corporate world because mega-corporations themselves are psychopaths and only a psychopath could possibly run one successfully. So I found myself agreeing with them  wholeheartedly.  These creeps deserve to die for what they did and the government better damned well do it.

I wonder if this scene has repeated itself elsewhere in the nation?  Is this nation on the edge of exploding in rage at our politicians and the corporate masters who own them?

I think America might be reaching its breaking point.