American Morning
Mad as Hell: Why the national anger?
If the American mood these days were a movie line, it just might be the one shouted out by the character Howard Beale in the 1976 film, “Network”:
“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
We went to western Pennsylvania, Westmoreland County, to talk to voters about the anger that has spread from town halls to radio talk shows and to the floor of Congress. Last November the county went for John McCain over Barack Obama
It was in Westmoreland county that Obama campaigned just days before the April 2008 Democratic primary, saying that small-town Pennsylvania voters are “bitter” over their economic situation, and that they “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”
At buffalo wing night at the Kecksburg fire hall we met Janet Reed, who owns a nearby beauty shop. Like many of the people in the hall, she’s angry at the direction of the country. “I feel as though all the work done for many years ago has been undone,” she told Carol Costello. “It seems like the whole country is, like, out of tune...somebody’s got to get tough. Somebody has to bring us back to where we were 40 years ago.”
Chris Wesling was at the fire hall too. He owns a trucking company. “America’s angry,” he told us. “Everybody I talk to is angry...what we really need in Washington is common sense. We’ve got too many people that have their own agenda. And they don’t care about us, the people.” As for the nation’s elected representatives, Wesling has a solution: “We’ve got an election coming up next year and I’m sure we can get rid of a lot of them.”
In nearby Jeannette we met Irwin Polansky. He showed us his workshop and took us hunting.
Just like Wesling, he wants to “vote every politician out. Put new blood in there.” He’s especially upset about what he says is increasing government intrusion into people’s lives. ‘”It’s starting to look like it’s becoming a dictatorship. You have to do this. You have to do that.” As for all the shouting at politicians at town meetings, “...these people are frustrated. They have to get it off their chest. Where else and who else can they holler at?... So they go to the man that’s supposed to be representing them, so if they let them know how they feel maybe they’ll do something, but I doubt it.”
All of this anger and calls for a return to another time in America doesn’t sit well with two African American retirees we met in Pittsburgh’s Community of Reconciliation Church.
“When I hear phrases like, taking American back,” says Leon McCray, “taking America back to where? I’m 81-years-old. I don’t want to see America go back to what I saw.” His wife Carrie added, “And I’m from Alabama, and no, I don’t want to see America go back to where it was.”
As for why so many people are angry, Leon McCray thinks he knows:
“The people in America who are angry feel as though they’ve either lost something or they’re in danger of losing something that’s very important to them.”
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I think most of my friends and myself are more "scared" than mad. After losing 30 to 40% of our 401K's and savings,, with the prospect of no "cost of living" increase for three years in SS, how will most people manage to absorb all this. And the people that blame "race" for the problem, has everybody forgotten Pres. Obamas" Mother was "white", his Father was "black". I really don't think his color is a problem, I think it's his going back on his promise to have a "transparent, cross party lines, no pork will pass his desk and on and on it goes! Start living up to the promises and consider what the people want, not what the Congress interpretation of what the people want. We have no voice, because nobody in Washington listens!!!!
Gee! I wonder why people are so angry? Could it be the "quasi- military" take over that is surreptitiously creeping into our lives with being tazered for excercizing our right of "free-speech, as I know it from the Constitution? Could it be that the Swine Flu vaccine is just the beginning of genocide in this country to help bring the population down to 500,000,000 in the New World Order? I find being ordered to take the vaccine when I am not sick or demonstrating any evidence of infection, an invasion of my privacy. Influenza permeates and destroys populations of limited cleanliness resources. Any epidemics that have erupted and flourished was during a time when the general standard of living was in dirty surroundings as on the prairies and inner cities.
Could it be that the Swine Flu Vaccine movement is only a way of discovering the amount of Mercury/Squaline solution needed to kill people at the different weight levels that we all exhibit in this country? Could it be that Americans are sick and tired of being lied to and led into destruction through a false economy that started at the end of the Vietnam War(1975). Could it be that there is no more Social Security forcing many baby-boomers to construct a "working retirement"?
Gee, I wonder why there is so much anger? Our lives are being destroyed before our eyes. Why wait for the police? Why not just end it all as Joseph Goebbels at the demise of the Nazi Revolution and WWII?
We have the most inexperienced President in US history and the lowest rated (Democrat controlled since 06) congress in history and people are still blaming the Republicans and "racists" for all the anger. This government is spending us into bankrupcy.
If today's school kids were taught US HISTORY instead of political correctness, maybe there wouldn't be so much ignorance here. The only people who seem to like this direction are those who don't have to pay for anything or get their stuff subsidized. This anger will not be tamed by good speeches or race-baiting. It will be tamed when there is a REAL CHANGE, and it will begin by getting rid of these congressmen who have been in office 30 plus years and have caused these feelings in the first place.
"When Congress votes on a bill that they did not write, and did not read, why would anyone wonder about public anger? The folks that worry me are the ones who see what is going on and AREN’T angry."
i seem to recall Michael Moore pointing this out. You ARE speaking of the so-called "patriot act" aren't you?
Boss Rush, Glenn, and Hannity and the Republican's that can't get over the fact that they lost! Obama is just trying to clean up the mess they left for the American people.
When Congress votes on a bill that they did not write, and did not read, why would anyone wonder about public anger? The folks that worry me are the ones who see what is going on and AREN'T angry.