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.”