Las Vegas Shows the Deadly Toll of American Anger

Anger is one of humanity’s elemental particles. It’s small, unstable, simple to the point of crude. And yet, in the right densities and balances, it’s fundamental to who we are. Lately, in America at least, that balance has been wildly off. Nobody was responsible for the slaughter in Las Vegas on Oct. 1 but the monster who pulled the trigger — not policymakers in Washington, not anger-stokers on cable TV, not even the gunmakers who manufactured the instruments that made the carnage possible. The killer did the killing — period. But that killing came in a context, and that context is anger. Americans have made something of a fetish of our rage of late — a fact that’s even been leaking into our language. The base is never just “animated,” it’s always “enraged.” Health care debates are never “spirited,” they’re always “furious.” In the run-up to the 2016 election, a CNN/ORC poll found that 69% of Americans reported being either very or somewhat angry at the state of the nation. That showed itself in a kind of rage voting on both sides of the political divide. Trump! Bernie! Take that. “The way the Internet and cable news work, outrage over any event can be mustered easily,” says David Pizarro, a professor of psychology at Cornell University. “We feel those emotions strongly in ways we didn’t used to.” Michael Kimmel, a professor of sociology and ge...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized behavior Gun Control Guns health ideas Las Vegas mass shootings politics psychology Source Type: news