Okay, I'm a bit behind the times here, but back in January, we may have crossed a cultural Rubicon when Burger King released the bizarre Angry Whopper. This latest salvo from the fast food wars is a new version of the standard BK favorite, only with these added goodies: onions, jalapenos, pepper jack cheese, bacon, tomatoes, lettuce, mayo, and a spicy "Angry Sauce." In case you want more damage from this burger than just your arteries and acid reflux, you can also go online and send an "Angry-Gram," which is an electronic message delivered to someone you dislike (or like -- see disclaimer below) by a talking Angry Whopper that voices the text you type (http://www.angry-gram.com/index.php). However, lest we give in to the temptation to burn all of our social bridges via an enraged, animated meat sandwich, Burger King does offer this warning: 

"An Angry-Gram is the perfect way to let someone know they annoy the hell outta you. Tell us who they are and what they do that drives you up the wall. We'll send over a screaming Angry WHOPPER Sandwich that'll really let them have it. Angry-Grams are intended to be humorous and should not be used with an intent to harass."

Well, thank goodness, because that ingredients-list had Weapons of Mass Destruction written all over it. Here's hoping that the Angry Whopper will be used for gastronomical and entertainment purposes only, because it's a slippery slope from an irate burger down to something like, say, a Suicide Pizza attack, or a Drive-By Footlong sub.

In all seriousness, though, as we careen down the slope of Post-Peak America, free-floating rage is emerging as the emotion-du-jour. Economic anxiety is the perfect catalyst for anger, frustration, and destruction aimed at both the self and others. And increasingly, our cultural icons, from Rush Limbaugh to Jon Stewart, are simply catalysts and outlets for our bubbling and churning ire. How did we get to this place, where the short fuse is the leitmotif of America?  

Now, although it's interesting, my concern here is not the anger that may be produced by violent cultural products like video games, gangster rap (is there such a thing any more?), and ridiculous talk and reality shows that titillate via staged conflict. Yes, Jerry Springer- type fodder is awful, but the sensationalism and violence that are necessary to promote popular entertainment have been around for millennia. People have always been fascinated by tales and depictions of war, mayhem, and slaughter, if for no other reason that they are so manifestly different than everyday, humdrum existence.

No, what I am more concerned with in this post is the devolution of our political rhetoric into a vehicle for venting popular rage and angst. Why are our major leaders so intent on demonizing, dehumanizing, and verbally crushing their ideological opponents? Obama may be a breath of fresh air in this regard, and we can only hope that his tremendous statesmanship and sheer political skill will usher in a new era of American discourse. But as is probably obvious to those who have read earlier postings on this blog, I do not expect that any large-scale, centralized efforts to rescue the American Algorithm will work, no matter how lofty their intentions. And as we slide down the slope of economic contraction and declining fortune, the enraged-citizen motif will rear its ugly head again, and with impunity. The ridiculous posturing over the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor can thus be seen as Republicans dipping their toes in extremist waters, laying the ground work for full-scale assaults on Congress and the Presidency in 2010 and 2012. 

But why does this rage-mongering work so well, and why for decades on end? And here, I am not just talking about conservative hate-speech champions like Limbaugh. We cannot let our liberal rage against Dubya and Vader (Cheney) off the hook so easily. I was as frustrated as anyone with the last eight years, and I certainly found myself physically disturbed on countless occasions. But I made great efforts to not demonize the vast expanse of conservative sentiment in general. And indeed, I find much that is laudable in grassroots conservative thought. I think that their explanatory frameworks are wrong, but I absolutely believe that the vast majority of regular Americans, both liberal and conservative, want the same things: a secure nation, a peaceful world, dignified work, safe communities, etc. So how do we get so angry at one another? Why is there enough rage out there to keep the Limbaughs, Stewarts, Savages, and the like employed? 

Now as an aside, liberal readers might object to my lumping Jon Stewart in with Rush Limbaugh, and obviously they are completely different types of personalities. Stewart is a comedian first and foremost, while Rush is a pure ideologue. I shiver every time I hear conservatives like Joe Scarborough describe Limbaugh as just an entertainer. His show is really not entertaining in the least. It is a tedious, hyper-redundant rant that continually peddles far-right pablum of the most dubious kind. And unlike Stewart, Rush is not self-deprecating. Quite the opposite: he revels in his own influence, wallows in his narcissistic sense of self-importance, and gives off the most unearned sense of self-righteous on the planet. And he's on the air for three hours a day, which may be one of the pedestrian reasons that he is so damn tedious. Stewart, by contrast, has a team of talented TV writers who churn out the very best in political satire, but they only have to do it for 22 minutes a day. And Stewart himself is self-deprecating, reserved, and surprisingly fair in his interviews. It is actually remarkable how many heavy-hitting conservatives he gets to come on his show, even despite the unfriendly liberal milieu. He does his homework, and generally does not personally attack his conservative guests (except Jim Cramer, see here for my take on that). So in that sense, Stewart and Limbaugh are very different.

But in another way, they accomplish the same goal, just via different mechanisms. Limbaugh stokes conservative rage with over-the-top rhetoric, hyper-contorted facts (i.e., lies), and generally grandiose bloviation. Stewart skewers the right, and thus fires up the left, by deftly hoisting conservatives on their own petard, via brilliant satire. In both cases, their base audiences are allowed to indulge their own deep sense of offense and self-righteousness. Why are they so successful at that?

I'd like to return here to some of my earliest posts on this blog, from last summer. What got me going in this whole blogging thing was my general disgust with the main narratives being put forth by both conservatives and liberals (or, as they like to be known nowadays, "Progressives" -- a label I eschew because I do not hold to a directional nature of history. But that's another topic). It has been obvious for years now that the country and the planet are in deep doo-doo. We're facing an incredible set of interlinked problems, what I have dubbed "Concentric Circles of Collapse," And yet, the explanatory narratives we hear from our leaders, the Conservative Story and the Liberal Story, are all but useless. They do not address the actual facts on the ground: growing wealth inequality, peak oil, over-consumption, the destruction of labor-value, the ecological catastrophe that is the American way of life, etc. As a result, our major political parties have no real solutions to the macro-threats to human civilization and the biosphere. 

Since the people that control the levers of our government, our economy, and our culture have essentially bankrupt models for understanding our dire circumstances, things just get worse and worse. We throw trillions of dollars, millions of young bodies, and thousands upon thousands of "programs" at our problems, and what do have to show for it? People being thrown out of their homes. Families plunged into destitution because they lack health insurance to respond to unexpected illness. We have ice shelves calving off of Antarctica at alarming rates. Epidemic drug use. Disappearing bee populations. Exhausted fisheries. Vanishing fresh water. You get the idea. (For those interested in how our decades of programs can fail to solve any major problems, I highly recommend Daniel Quinn's Beyond Civilization. Quinn is the author of the amazing book Ishmael, also worth checking out).

So we are essentially facing epochal failures of societies and ecosystems, but our major leaders are feeding us bullshit explanations for everything, fantasies of blame, bogus victimization shtick, and pompous self-righteousness. And to use a legal analogy, you can't get good fruit from a poisonous tree. Since the Conservative Story and the Liberal Story are epic snowjobs, nothing good can actually come from their enactment in the policy arena. False premises yield bad results. So we now have the largest military in the world, probably a trillion bucks a year, with hundreds of bases spread all over the globe. And yet we're terrified of some rogue states getting a nuke or two, as if North Korea or Iran would invite their instant destruction by lobbing a bomb at Israel or Alaska. We spend more money than any other country in the world on health insurance, but a third of the country is uninsured and health problems are the number one cause of home foreclosures and bankruptcies. We have the most dynamic, productive, and robust economy in the world, but we've funneled all that loot upwards for the last 40 years, so that regular families are now worse off than they were in 1975 (and that's with an extra breadwinner in many households). Does anyone think this whole thing is working?

So our political parties have now become catalysts for only three things: winning elections, serving the moneyed interests that fund the campaigns to win those elections, and stoking the rage of the citizens who will vote in those elections. That's it. Of course, the existing federal bureaucracies are the actual guts and workings of the system, and those government employees do deliver services that have value. But the overarching management of Democrats and Republicans, in relation to these programs and services, have no grand vision that grooves with the starkest facts on the ground. That's why we have so much rage in the arena of political discourse. No matter who is in power, the faulty guiding narratives virtually guarantee continued failure and injustice. I'd be angry too. Actually, I am.