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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (June 21, 2017)
22 Wednesday, June 21, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon Commentary... Might as well face it, we’re addicted to rage By Jim Cornelius News Editor Jeremy Christian, who fatally slashed two men on a Portland MAX train and wounded another last month, is a rage junkie. He is full of bilious anger toward anyone who is not him. When three men intervened as he spewed his wrath and anti-Muslim abuse at a pair of teenaged girls, he turned that rage on them and left them in a welter of blood. James T. Hodgkinson, who opened fire on Republican congressmen and staffers at an early morning baseball practice last Wednesday, was a rage junkie. As a column in the Los Angeles Times notes, “There seemed to be little about America that James T. Hodgkinson agreed with. He had a hero, Bernie Sanders. But his enemies seemed to be endless.” Americans are becoming a nation of rage junkies. Most, of course, will never act out their rage in such spectacu- larly destructive fashion, but rage can also work insidi- ously, eroding and corroding souls and the ties that bind a society together. Rage is powerful and addictive. Rage arouses and stimulates — it makes us feel more alert, more powerful, more alive. Nothing like a big hit of righteous wrath to make you feel better about yourself — at least for a moment. It supplies that delicious shot of dopamine that our brains crave. But like any powerful drug, the effects wear off, leaving us feeling less than we did before — and needing another, heavier hit to get high. Rage addiction is nothing new, of course — it’s been wired into us since we first climbed down out of the trees on the African savannah. But we have some new and novel tools at our fingertips with which to feed the addiction — and with which others can exploit it for fun and profit. In a National Review col- umn recently, Ben Shapiro notes that: “…something new has happened to American poli- tics in the last few years: Politicians have realized that the simplest path to power is to humor everyone’s anger. If you take someone’s anger from them, you’ve emotion- ally castrated them. More important, you run the risk of driving them into the arms of someone who will feed their anger — an anger that will now turn on you for the sin of having discounted that anger in the first place. “This is deeply unhealthy.” You think? And it’s worse than that. There are people getting very rich off of stok- ing the fire, and they’re using sophisticated neuro-psycho- logical prompts to elicit our addictive behaviors. Talk radio and cable info- tainment networks build their entire business model around feeding anger. And more than a few people spend hours each day punching the but- ton over and over, sharing memes and screeds on social media— just one more hit. Just one more. Whatever you hate, what- ever really hacks you off, you can share it in a second and maybe get a hit of valida- tion as a chaser. Appalled by Trump? Rent the guy space in your head all day long while you shoot out dozens of screeds and call it “resis- tance.” (Ironically, if any- thing brings Trump down, it will be his inability to control his raging Twitter finger.) Scorn the “libtards”? Share that killer demeaning meme. Oh, that really got ’em. Feels good. Do it again. That’s not discourse; it’s not discussion; it’s not debate. It’s just pushing buttons — our own and other peoples’. The horrible results of addictive rage are obvious when they manifest them- selves in acts of vicious vio- lence. But the vastly more common and more insidious effects of constant rage are not less horrible for being less self-evident. A friend likens it to “slapping a saw.” The saw is impervious to our rage — and the teeth will inevitably tear us up. This is not to say that all anger is misplaced. The world is — as it has ever been — full of folly, greed, venal- ity and outright evil. Anger at such things is legitimate and justified. It is, in fact, neces- sary. Anger channeled into effective action can effect significant change. What gets harder and harder to distinguish is what is effective action and what is slapping a saw? Are we doing something useful with our anger or simply looking for a quick hit of emotional payoff, hitting the button repeatedly like a crack-addled monkey — tearing ourselves up as a result, to no good end at all? Ultimately, we are what we do, not what we feel or what we say. An artist friend tells me that “we are respon- sible for building the world we want to live in.” Seems like picking up the toolbox is the antidote to rage. ...but you can count on Fullhart Insurance! Competitive pricing & great service for over 20 years. AUTO • HOME • HEALTH • LIFE • BUSINESS 541-549-3172 • 1-800-752-8540 • 704 W. Hood Ave. A member of Fullhart Insurance Agency, Inc. Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. preciouscargoseafood.com Seeking Coordinator Do you have 20 hours of your time to give to coordinating the 5th Annual Taste of Sisters? This event has raised approximately $10,000 for the Sisters Food Bank and Furry Friends Foundation in the last four years. It is an amazing feeling to help our community in this way. Taste of Sisters is an affordable and accessible event where people can eat at nearly every restaurant and food establishment in Sisters in one night, in one location. Systems are in place and you will be trained. If you are interested in volunteering, give Karen Kassy a call at The Nugget, 541-549-9941. • Allergies • Insomnia • Adrenal/Thyroid FREE CONSULTATIONS 100% Wild & Flash Frozen 63356 Nels Anderson Rd., Bend Summer traffic is making its presence felt in Sisters. To help relieve conges- tion on Highway 20/Cascade Avenue through the city of Sisters an advertised alternate route will run on weekends for westbound traffic. The Variable Message Sign (VMS) located on Highway 20 east of Locust Street for westbound traffic will read: “Alternate Route for US-20/126 take next right.” The message will appear Friday afternoon at 1 p.m. and will stay on the board until 7 p.m. Sunday night dur- ing the summer season. The route takes westbound traffic through the Sisters Industrial Park on Barclay Drive, out- side the downtown core. You didnʼt count on this... INSURANCE OF SISTERS Huge Variety • Special Orders, No Problem Fresh or Live Seafood Alternate route in place in Sisters MEANINGFUL DICINE MEDICINE Kim Hapke, Naturopath 971-409-0908 Sisters Art Works Building
