America's Slow Boil

Are we at an inflection point? Is something about to POP?

I just spent about nine days in Fiji. As you might imagine, it was generally-relaxing. I met a pearl farmer, who formerly owned an advertising agency in Montreal, who told us that “something is different about America now. It feels angrier.” Maybe because he told me that the day before I flew home, I was thinking about it — and within minutes of landing at LAX, I saw countless examples of people being mean and nasty to each other. That’s not an uncommon site at a very busy, and structurally outdated, airport. So, I get it. But in general, doesn’t it seem like people are angrier?

There’s been a monumental amount of media coverage on this topic since about 2011, which is three years into Obama and when we really saw some racial animus begin to bubble over (“We might get a second term of this black guy?”), three years after the financial crash, the beginning of a free money era for big companies, right around Trump’s birther stuff, etc. When people write these articles and make these videos about general animosity in America, you come to a couple of big buckets:

• Political polarization

• Income/economic inequality

• Social media

• Cable news

• Distrust in government

• Decline of organized religion

• Rise in divorce and decline in childbirth, childrearing, etc.

Those are some of your big buckets. Everyone has their own theory, and another acceptable theory is “People aren’t angrier, and things are going great.” That’s also very possible.

I think it completely varies by specific class or situation or contextual moment. For example,