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The cycles of rage. Is the recent tone of DU really just mainstream?
I can't go back too far into history because I'm still just a younger geezer, but let's look back at least to the 60s. The classic teevee show "All in the Family" pretty much used the rage of that era as fodder for its excellent plot lines. On the one hand there was Archie, representing the mostly WWII veteran aged 'adult' white, Christian, male. Archie resented everything that had transpired since Herbert Hoover left office. The show's theme song even mentioned this. On the other side was the mostly ineffectual Mike Stivik, mostly raging against Archie. Also raging against Archie was his neighbor, the equally angry, but for very different reasons, George Jefferson.
Archie was, indeed, an Everyman. He was the white, Christian, heterosexual, male. He was raging against a world that his many nemesises were working hard to create.
Following Archie was the Silent Majority. Feeding into and off of them, and frothing them to an all-consuming rage, was a nascent right wing talk radio.
This begat the Reagan Democrats and the Moral Majority. With them all the way was right wing talk radio. They raged and raged.
They raged against the blacks.
They raged against the gays.
They raged against the independent women.
They raged against the Jews.
They raged against the atheists.
And they raged against the Liberals.
Meanwhile, while those vilified experienced and exercised some spotty (and mostly righteous) anger and rage, there was no counterbalancing rage to that which truly energized the right. We had the myth of the angry black man in the 70s. We had the myths of angry women and angry draft-eligible kids. These were as much - or more likely more - right wing created hate targets as they were real phenomena.
But the last six plus years, at least, have fomented a different kind of rage. It is much more genuine. It caused the beginnings of a left wing radio rather than being the product of such. It caused the coalescing of disparate groups to a common cause rather than growing out of it.
Those not still followers of the right wing rage machine are now raging against it. Some of that rage remains amorphous and only fuzzily targeted. But it is coming into clearer focus. We are becoming the Backlash of the New American Century. We're liberal, we're gay, we're of color, we're working class and we're educated. We're young and we're old. We lived the 60s and we don't even know its history. We fought in Viet Nam and we fought in the Middle East. We came when we were called to duty. We're less likely to have been shirkers. We're involved and we're aware. We're rich, we're poor, and we're everything in between. We really ARE America.
And we're raging.
And our rage is growing.
Some of us have managed to get in touch with the rage. Some of us have not. Some of us are targeting that rage and some of us are shooting friend and foe alike.
But we are becoming a force. A real force. One that can be harnessed and directed and led.
And Archie Bunker is scared as he has never been scared before.
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