America’s epidemic of rage

Last month, my friend Monica was driving her two children to school when she had a near fender-bender in a crowded and complicated intersection. The other driver, piloting a large work truck, tailgated and followed her in a rage, finally pulling beside her and blowing out her passenger window with what was assumed to be a pellet gun before driving off. I shudder to think about the mental state of a man so angered by a five-second interruption in traffic flow that he would terrorize a woman and her two young children and take actions that could have killed all three of them.

A few months ago, there was a murder on a busy downtown intersection in Portland, Oregon. It didn’t involve gangs or drugs, or any kind of street crime that typically accompanies gunfire. The killer and victim were complete strangers, just two drivers raging at each other after a momentary interaction.

Since the advent of the road, there has been road rage, but there is something more insidious going on. Over the last five years, injuries and deaths from road rage have more than doubled in America, from 70 deaths and 176 injuries in 2018 to 141 deaths and 413 injuries last year. We’re literally killing people because we don’t like the way they drive.

America is raging. We shoot strangers for cutting us off in traffic, pulling into our driveways, knocking at our doors or because we don’t approve of their political opinions. According to a poll by CBS News, 84 percent of our compatriots believe we are angrier than previous generations, and 42 percent admit to being personally angry. Many reasons are cited, including Covid, financial uncertainty, drug abuse, income inequality, corrosive media and, of course, traffic. But rage is at epidemic proportions, and perhaps there is another group that shares responsibility — our politicians.

If another pandemic or a tropical storm was killing as many Americans as rage is, our government would act. But many political leaders are doing the opposite, spreading the disease by replacing political platforms with anger and even open violence. During an interview on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Rep. Dean Philips (D-Minn.) explained that inciting people to anger is an essential fundraising technique.

A successful political process requires civility, respect and compromise, which seem almost nonexistent today. The Republican primary debates were a vivid example of anger politics, with one candidate crassly attacking another candidate’s daughter, resulting in the outraged comeback, “you’re just scum.”

Last year, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) had to be physically restrained from attacking Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Cali.) was accused of elbowing Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) in the back, before the two began shouting at each other. Later that day, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) stood up in chambers and challenged Teamster President Sean O’Brien to a fist fight, yelling, “stand your butt up.” In an interview the next day, he doubled down, threatening to bite his adversary should they go to battle.

Of course, the OG of rage politics is former President Donald Trump. He consulted volume one of “Fascists Greatest Hits” to proclaim he will, “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” This kind of rhetoric isn’t mere “locker room talk” — Trump’s proclamations have a history of leading to violence and insurrection.

Not only is inciting rage profitable and helpful in building a constituency, but it is also effective at obfuscating genuine issues. It’s easier to threaten opponents, immigrants and other nations with annihilation than to thoughtfully lead a population through complex solutions. A raging politician aims to build a wrathful, supportive cult as they drift towards authoritarianism, since it is impossible to govern a democracy via intimidation and subterfuge.

Rage governance is not only corrosive to the population, but masks incompetence, stunts societal development and threatens democracy. In a study published in 2022, 43 percent of Americans (and 55 percent of Republicans) felt it was likely we would have a civil war within the next decade. 15 percent of Trump supporters (versus 5 percent of all voters) believe violence is justified to keep their candidates in office.

Political demonization by officials too incompetent to govern has convinced a significant percentage of the nation that Americans killing Americans is an acceptable way to solve our differences. Rage governance is a kind of political corruption, as the elected official abandons what is best for constituents to instead manipulate them through dangerous emotion.

Certainly the anger and violence in America have complicated roots, not all of them political. And I will admit that the idea of a cage fight between Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell sounds entertaining, and probably not dangerous. But there was a time not long ago when we expected a modicum of maturity from our politicians. We might be beyond expecting even that minimal standard, but for our own good it would seem advisable to insist our leaders at least don’t promote violence and rage to feed their campaign coffers.

As Albert Einstein said, “force always attracts men of low morality,” and we deserve better from our leaders. Kinder, gentler government won’t fix all our problems. We would still have a media financially incentivized to flood our brains with adrenaline and cortisol. But lowering the anxiety and rhetoric might decrease the chances that a stranger suddenly decides to shoot us because they don’t like our bumper sticker, or we accidentally cut them off in traffic.

Tim O’Leary is the author of “Men Behaving Badly,” “Dick Cheney Shot Me in the Face,” and “The Corona Verses,” available from Rare Bird Books.