Anger revisited

As everyone knows, Anger is, unlike most of the sins I've written about, one of the original Seven Deadlies, which means that like Greed, Avarice, Lust, and Inadequate Lawn Care (okay, you caught me, I made that one up), it is traditionally thought to be a bad thing.

So I'd like to get over my anger momentarily and write dispassionately about the events of the past month--the disaster that was Hurricane Katrina and the even bigger disaster that was the Bush administration's response to it--but when I contemplate the hurricane, I find that I am beside myself with rage.

Bush's response to Katrina was so incredibly inadequate that even the most cynical among us were amazed. Once he had bestirred himself from his vacation, his reactions to the crisis followed a Kubler-Ross-esque pattern of bumbling: first, My-Pet-Goat-like paralysis at hearing the news, followed by quick Denial. He went through an Anger phase in which he attempted to blame others, then did a little Bargaining, finally ending up at a qualified form of Acceptance in which he appeared to take responsibility, but really, didn't.

The reason for Bush's PR problem was clear to anyone following Karl Rove's whereabouts during the catastrophe: Bush's brain had gone missing. Rove had been, like the rest of the vacationing Bush administration, off-duty when the hurricane struck, sidelined, apparently, by kidney stones. This is why, rumor has it, Bush's rhetoric about the hurricane did not turn oratorical or even coherent until his speech in front of theatrically lit historic Jackson Square in which he pledged a "reconstruction" program for New Orleans that would give millions of federal dollars to his cronies at Halliburton, et al. The program would be funded by a combination of "budget cuts" (i.e., cuts in services to poor and middle-class people) and loans from China, though he didn't mention that last bit.

I'd tell you more about the speech, but talking about it, and about Bush in general, makes me too hopping mad. If I think about how Karl Rove crawled back from his sickbed, presumably under a rock, to mastermind this giant payola scheme that will not only make Bush-loving corporations richer but will further enable the shrinking of federal programs that actually help ordinary people, such as the evacuees of New Orleans, and will facilitate the Bushites' goal to take government and, in their friend Grover Norquist's oft-quoted phrase, "drown [it] in a bathtub," I might just burst a blood vessel.

The other night, to get my mind off Bush and Katrina, I went to a party. Well, not actually a party--a meet-up for the Humane Society to protest the slaughter of horses, hosted by my friend Bob Pyle, whose album of loopy animal rights songs, Apples and Oranges, is a must for all vegetarians (see www.bobpyle.com for details). I thought it might be nice to sit around talking about helping animals for a while, but it was just depressing. The facts about horse slaughter, of which everyone should be made aware (www.hsus.org/pets/issues_affecting_our_pets/equine_protection/horse_slaughter_common_myths.html ), are utterly sickening. I sat reading a horrific brochure for a while, then when I couldn't handle it any more, struck up a conversation with a guy wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a cage crammed with battery hens.

We chatted for a while about the chicken biz, agreeing that it is unconscionable. Then I happened to mention that I thought that the real problem was not just with the treatment of animals, per se, but with the larger issue of the take-over of America by right-wing corporate scoundrels, and that the fact that 39 percent of the American people (at last count) were such idiots that they couldn't see what the Bush administration, whose tentacles reach everywhere, was up to, made me furious.

When I said the word "idiots," the chicken guy looked shocked. In a kind, reasonable way, he opined that it was better to talk to people in a kind, reasonable way about the issues and not to alienate them with undue emotionalism. It is only through polite discourse, he said, that we can change people's minds about the issues. I told Chicken Guy that I never talk to people who disagree with me about Bush because first of all, I don't know any, and second, I would just end up getting mad and screaming at them, so there would be no point.

"Well, then, what is your strategy?" he asked.

I told him that I write for a local independent newspaper. "My strategy is to write about politics--or rather," I amended, "I try not to write about politics, but I always do."

"And you try to change people's minds?"

I thought about it for a minute. "I rant about things," I said, "and then people who already agree find that comforting--at least, I hope they do."

"And does that make you feel better?"

A twinkle of superiority was beginning to develop in Chicken Guy's eye.

He knew what my answer would be.

"No," I conceded.

I could tell that he was about to ask me why I don't try to use cool, calm reason to change people's minds, to make them more aware of the issues--horse slaughter, for example, which until the party I had known nothing about. Luckily, at that moment, my friend Helena showed up, and after some polite mingling, she and I went to my house and watched Bollywood videos for the rest of the night.

"Bob keeps emailing me pictures of starving St. Bernards," Helena complained to me. "I wish he'd stop it. I'm upset enough as it is."

Helena's husband just left her for another woman. Today would have been their anniversary. I'm very angry at her husband, who was also my good friend, but at least their split was not Bush's fault.

"I know what you mean," I said as we watched Karisma Kapoor do a disco dance choreographed by someone who had obviously seen too many Pat Benatar videos.

But even after the dreamlike colors of Bollywood--my drug of choice--I could not get the horrific images of the horses out of my mind, or the starving St. Bernard that Bob had emailed everyone a picture of, or the people who were left by our drowning federal government to die in New Orleans, the people I had seen sobbing on the news with such heart-wrenching stories that hardened reporters were crying with them, or the people who have died in Iraq because of our senseless war, the soldiers who have been blown to pieces and have come home in coffins we're not allowed to see, or have come home without limbs, or the photos that we all saw from Abu Ghraib, or the photos from Abu Ghraib that we haven't seen yetÉ.All of these awful pictures whirl together in our minds all the time, if we're paying attention, and even if we try to forget them, 61 percent of us evidently can't. We live in the calm eye of a kaleidoscopic storm of horror, with events circling around us that emanate not, it seems to me, directly from George W. Bush, since it's evident that he's not in charge of his own agenda--witness his utter paralysis without his henchmen--but from the web of evil he has surrounded himself with, the shadowy goons of the vast right-wing corporate lobby that has enlisted Bush, a vacuous narcissist, as a point man in their plot to rape the world.

So I would argue that in the face of the death and destruction that have followed in the wake of the catastrophic Bush presidency, anger is not a sin, but a necessity. Deadly or not, if we don't feel anger--if we're not trembling with rage at what's happening to our country, to our world--then we are evil bastards or fools.