In Praise of Anger

IN FOCUS, 23 Dec 2024

Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service

19 Dec 2024 – Anger is as normal a human emotion as any other – affection, combativeness, protectiveness, sorrow. It gets a bad press these days, though. That is especially true in intellectual circles and among the self-consciously virtuous/goodhearted in general. That’s surprising in one sense. After all, an incapacity to get angry probably would have resulted in homo sapiens being beaten out in the survival contest against the evolving Neanderthals, Denisovans and other hominins we competed against. Anger was crucial to survival – not anger directed necessarily at other tribes. Much less beasts of the fields and forests. Rather, anger at the slacker, anger at the bully, anger at the (game) poacher, anger at the thief, anger at (s)he who sowed discord, anger at the vain warmonger ever looking for a fight, anger at the rogue who broke the rules just to show his superiority.

Anger makes so many of our contemporaries uneasy due to its association with violence.

The fact that violence is an action while anger is a feeling contributes to that uneasiness. In ‘enlightened’ modern societies, we believe that our aggressive instincts should be controlled/constrained by our rational intellect and restrained emotions. Impulsive, unmanaged violence is what we expect from predatory animals and madmen. Obviously, the former- along with God’s other creatures – only act violently in order to survive. No one denies that humans do, too. But most prefer to keep it pretty much out of sight – except when fishing for tasty trout or viewing a documentary about slaughterhouses. We don’t celebrate our Reptilian brain – except for the likes of Erik Prince and Luca Brasi. Culture and social norm stand between us and it. We call that “progress.”

Probably, the main reason we are so ambivalent in our thinking about violence is the frequency with which we direct it against other humans. For that redounds to the disadvantage of the social collectivity and its individual members. The more organized the violence, the more it employs the tools and techniques created by our complex brains, the more dangerous and frightening it becomes. That ambivalence is expressed in our attitudes toward the sacred moral codes that have emerged to keep societies from dissolving into mayhem. All the great religions have a humanistic core. Killing, in particular, is proscribed – albeit with qualifications, very important qualifications. That is, unless you are a Jain, certain types of Buddhist or a Christian who lives by the word of Jesus instead of the word of a Church. Hence, attitudes about anger have been intertwined with attitudes toward violence. That stands in the way of a discerning examination of how anger figures in the human behavioral equation.

There are all kinds of legitimate reasons to get angry – good reasons for wanting to condemn and to confront those whose conduct gravely offends us. To suppress those feelings is no virtue.

For it has several perverse effects: it enables/facilitates harmful actions taken with impunity, it obscures norms of socially acceptable behavior, it leads to the dilution of ethical judgments that become habitually hesitant and contingent; and it permits the deepening of a cultural nihilism that is unravelling our society. The US today is divided between those who vent their anger in destructive assaults against established institutions, principles, and persons – on the one hand, and those who are unable to feel anger and, therefore, to act in counteracting persons/things that are a cause of distress and should be a target of outrage – on the other.

Humans often need the anger to stir them, to move them, to energize them.

We need anger to override all the inhibitions of the complacent, comfortable existence enjoyed by most of US political class, by its professional classes. For that generates lethargy, the timidity, the insentience that has opened a clear path for the crazed fanatics – for the destroyers. It is absurd that we are treated to endless homilies decrying angry responses; that we should be counseled – still – about the paramount necessity of compromise; about cultivating common ground. That kind of therapy talk, New York Times Editorial Board talk, Pelosi-Schumer talk, Barack Obama talk, Foundation talk, NPR talk – is a killer. It is digging our grave. Even that small handful of public figures who demonstrate a good measure of courage and conviction – even anger, like Bernie Sanders, find sustained anger uncomfortable.

The counsel of Aristotle cautioned:

“Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”

The Nicomachean Ethics

Should it not be normal, and in accord with our social nature, to get passionately angry when the Federal Reserve gifts the financial predators $2 trillion – relieving them of their toxic derivatives, and low-grade junk bonds – and then adds a couple of trillion more via Quantitative Easing while 11 million homeowners lose their houses due to the banks’ mortgage fraud? Isn’t outrage the natural reaction to revelations that the country’s biggest corporations’ tax rate is 3%? That under our regressive tax system, those individuals in the upper 1% bracket pay at a lower rate than citizens in the lower brackets?

Shouldn’t we be angry that self-serving hospital administrators, at the height of the Covid-19 epidemic, fire doctors and nurses who complain that are denied vital protective equipment? Or to the neglect of the inmates of nursing homes where the staff do not get essential supplies, elementary precautions are ignored, and the dead get no recognition as victims of the Corona virus – just written off like the ‘collaterally damaged’ civilians killed by our rampage through the Middle East? Are we supposed to accept with no more than a mild reproof that COVID-19 was scything its way through the crowded  quasi-prisons where our government warehoused thousands of immigrant children – torn from their parents – in defiance of court orders nobody enforces?; that our bipartisan politicos mandate autocratically run social media sites to censure and ban at will persons, organizations or ideas they dislike?; to acquiesce in the Supreme Court’s anti-Constitutional coup whereby its majority have arrogated to themselves the unbridled authority to override any action by the Congress or the Executive?

Abroad:

shouldn’t we have been angry that the US has been a belligerent in the Saudi campaign to slaughter Yemen’s Houthis in a war that serves no national interest other than to secure the friable goodwill of the US fair-weather friend Mohammed bin-Salman? Angry that for 7 years we were allies of al-Qaeda’s murderous affiliate in Syria, and now act as their allies in imposing a jihadist yoke on the country? Angry that we take the lead in toppling, or trying to topple, democratically elected governments in Bolivia, Honduras, Haiti, Venezuela, Georgia, Romania, Ukraine to be replaced by an assortment of neo-Fascists, dictators, resource predators, and bigots? Angry that our government is placing the country’s very life in jeopardy by tearing-up hard-won nuclear treaties?

Angry that we are lied into ruinous wars by leaders who distain sharing their plans with the North American people? Angry that the Biden administration has committed the country to an all-out, open-ended winner-take-all battle against China for Global Supremo without a modicum of debate or explicit statement of the grounds for so reckless a course?

And then there is Palestine where the US has torn up its birthright as a nation founded on enlightened principles of civic decency and buried it in the rubble of Gaza. There it is an active accomplice in the most sordid, heinous crimes against humanity. Crimes that have scarred indelibly our collective conscience. Yet, our public class – with but a tiny handful of exceptions – sees no cause for anger or even remorse. Instead, they take furious vengeance against anyone who dares pronounce our guilt.

“Guilty is a word unspoken except where innocence dares to plead.”
   — Shakesepeare

In today’s circumstances, shouldn’t we be reluctant to put trust in public figures who are incapable of justifiable outrage and healthy anger?

Should we not be angry at being forced into that dilemma?

Jesus & the Money-Changers

John 2:13-22 – 13: When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14: In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15: So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16: To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” 17: His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

An erudite reader has sent this enlightening reference:

“Jesus himself was angry on occasions as when he drove the money changers out of the temple. Angry when the religious leaders objected to his healing on the Sabbath. Angry when the leaders prevented those who would follow Jesus from doing so. Our problem is that we are not angry at the things that angered him.”

 Paul, striving to square the circle a few years later, counseled:

Eph. 4:26 “in your anger do not sin.”

There is no evidence that Jesus deliberated before chasing the money changers out of the Temple – much less sought the advice of his disciples or anyone else. Nonetheless, let us imagine other courses of action that could have presented themselves to him – had he been inclined to ponder the rightness of taking any action.

 Alternatives

1. JESUS could have taken what one can label the Schumer/Pelosipath. That would have entailed entering into a dialogue with the financiers and the Temple authorities. They, doubtless, would have explained to this naïve young militant from the boondocks that – contrary to his negative impressions – the money-changers were there to perform a service for the congregants. After all, they had made a long, arduous journey to Jerusalem from as far away as Ctesiphon, Alexandria or Rome to partake of the rituals at the heart of Judea during the High Holy days and during Passover. The money men were not engaged in usury of any kind, but rather were providing a currency exchange – a sort of cambio.

However, need they conduct their business within the Temple itself, even during services? Wasn’t that an offense in the eyes of Elohim* (God had undergone a name change since the days of Yahweh)?

So, a compromise was in order. Jesus would refrain from railing against the money-changers if they agreed to a modification in their business model. That included: moving their operation to the exterior grounds, suspending all transactions during services, and lowering their ‘cut’ from manipulating the exchange rate and fees from 12% to 6%. The money-lenders protested that they never cleared anything close to 12% because they had to pay the Temple administration 3% for the franchise license, and other incidental expenses (e.g. passing a few shekels to the local constabulary to allow worshipers from abroad to double-park their chariots and carriages in the vicinity). Hence, a reasonable S/P compromise set 8% as the standard return. Settled!

2. The OBAMA alternative. Speak softly and leave your cudgel back in the serai. Stress shared faith, common devotion to the sacred precincts of the Temple and the overriding, common concern to avoid any unseemly altercation during Passover week.  Jesus would propose arrangements that everyone could accept as fair & reasonable. Were money changers agreeable to moving their exchange booth outdoors, they would receive a 97-year lease on a prime plot just beside the main Temple entry. Rates of return would be reduced, but variable – calculated according to a formula that included the Jerusalem consumer price index (JPI), fees imposed by Temple authorities, and the transaction costs associated with each foreign currency. A denarius or drachma carried a far lower cost than did an Indian rupa – for example. Any disagreement would be adjudicated by a 3-person panel: one member nominated by the money lender brotherhood, one by Jesus’ disciples and one by the Temple’s Association for the Propagation of the Priesthood.
3. The BIDENoption. Sternly declare that the money changing operation needed to be brought into the First Century. Here, in the Temple of the Lord, it should look like the great Hebrew people themselves. It no longer was acceptable that women should be excluded from the empowering, lucrative positions of money-changing. He knew personally several women who could count as well as men. He demanded that a 50-50 distribution by gender should be set – the target to be reached by next Passover, if not sooner. Furthermore, he called on the Congregation to show a newfound respect for traditionally shunned trans-genders by providing loans at concessionary interest rates as a form of reparations for past sins.  Speak loudly and brandish a souvenir camel whisk from Galilee.

Addendum

A couple of readers of an earlier version of this essay took exception to what they saw as unfounded touting of anger as an emotion that could be socially beneficial. While acknowledging that there is good reason to feel anger at what Trump or Biden had been doing, they “object to a continuous stream of angry talk, no matter how eloquent. What does it accomplish?  …. calm, reasoned speech, even if impassioned is preferable.”  There was something in those comments that made me ponder. As is my custom in such a circumstance, I sought moral guidance in Holy Scripture.

The OLD TESTAMENT not the NEW TESTAMENT. After all, doesn’t the former have wider currency these days – especially among the gang who now rule us?  The teachings of Jesus just seem a bit retro. Have you ever seen a video game featuring Jesus Christ and the Apostles? Violence and power games are a much better fit to the mayhem so vividly depicted in the Old Testament. So, it was there that I sought insight into the profound issues raised by my intemperate “In Praise of Anger.” I proceeded no further than EXODUS where I found a pertinent passage.

When Moses descended from Mount Sinai and saw his people dancing gayly about the Golden Calf, he could have chosen how to respond from among a number of alternatives.

1. There was the Chuck Schumer/Nancy Pelosioption: enter into talks with the celebrant leaders in search of a compromise – propose that the Hebrews worship the Golden Calf on odd days of the month, Yahweh on even days. Given their brilliance as negotiators, the deal would conclude with an accord that reserved the Sabbath for Yahweh and the rest for the idol. Moreover, they could highlight the additional concession they’d won: the Calf would be recast in 14K gold instead of the original 22K gold.
2. The Barack Obama path:declare that the primary thing was to avoid the destructive ‘blame game’ – we’re all in this together, and should strive to find common ground.  Proposal: everybody would be free to worship as they wished so long as they observed at least 8 or 9 of the 10 Commandments – going forward. The exact number to be determined by a taskforce of 10 elders selected by each tribe who were instructed to issue their report within 48 hours of the Hebrews setting foot on the Holy Land.
3. The Joe Biden option: a stern rebuke for the celebrants who had relegated the women to an outer circle far from the Golden Calf. Lecture them on the long litany of abuses imposed on females deemed subservient to males, most especially in the conduct of religious services. Whatever rites the Hebrews observed, women should share equally in priestly functions. Indeed, he could think of several women who were well qualified to be High Priest. Pledge that if beckoned again by Yahweh to the summit of Mount Sinai, Moses would insist that a woman accompany him.

 “And it came to pass, as soon as Moses came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses’ anger waxed hot, and he cast the tablets out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.”[2]

No Aristotelian, he did pay the price of involuntary early retirement.

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Michael Brenner is professor of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh; a senior fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations, SAIS-Johns Hopkins (Washington, D.C.), contributor to research and consulting projects on Euro-American security and economic issues. Publishes and teaches in the fields of US foreign policy, Euro-American relations, and the European Union. mbren@pitt.edu – More…

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 23 Dec 2024.

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