Why Are Americans Always So Fucking Pissed Off At Each Other?
Seems like a notable question of the moment, right?
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 That’s not an uncommon site at a very busy, and structurally outdated, airport.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:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to What Is Even Happening? to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.