Increasing Rage in the United States
Are we headed for chaos?
I struggled with writing this one. The topic is depressing, and at my older age, I try to minimize all things negative and focus on the positive things in life.
But we can’t live with their head in the sand either. Sometimes it can be good to step back from something and try to make sense of it.
My Friend the Truck Driver
I was sitting with my retiree friends at the bar one afternoon. We meet up there, have a few beers, and watch sports.
One of our friends walked up.
“I hope to join your ranks one day,” he said.
“My wife and I have our retirement plan in place… just a few years to go. That’s if I don’t kill somebody first.”
He’s a truck driver and drives all day, every day, and has for 30 years.
He continued.
“The drivers out there are getting crazy, cutting people off. No regard or patience for others on the road. It’s getting dangerous out there. I can’t just stop my truck on a dime.”
“And it all started with Covid.”
Whoa, what did he say?
I’ve had the same thought, that societal tension has increased noticeably since the Covid era.
Here was my friend, a man of separate mind and life experiences, with the same observation.
It got me to wondering.
Road Rage
For thirty-five years I had a 45 to 55-mile one-way commute to work. That’s between 24k and 35k miles a year, with the daily treks also including trips to sporting events.
I would have road rage directed at me once every ten years.
Now I put 3k miles on my vehicle a year, don’t leave my small town, and get road-raged at least once a week. Sometimes more.
Yes, sometimes I’m going 45 mph in a 55 zone.
Bad Grandpa.
I do speed up when I catch myself.
The Local Freeway Maniac
I was following a thread on a scanner chat forum where this guy in a black Dodge Charger is running people off the expressway in the 6:15 am to 6:30 am timeframe.
Tons of people chimed in about their personal experiences with this driver, and they were convinced he was going to kill somebody.
They have his license plate number and have contacted the police. Nothing has happened so far, and it may be that the police can’t do anything unless they catch him.
Some have adjusted their daily schedules to avoid this asshole.
Others are getting organized, documenting their personal experiences, and banding together with dashcams.
A potentially combustive potion could be in the making. If this situation is as bad as it sounds, there could be somebody in the mix, dealing with their frustrations, who decides to take matters into their own hands and solve the Black Charger problem in a final way.
It happened just a few years ago, a road rage situation in a neighboring small town. Two guys were at a traffic light and they had a dispute. One guy approached the other and shot him dead.
Daily Police Chases
It’s a regular thing now to read about police pursuits in our rural area. These are stolen vehicles from the cities to the east and west for the most part.
These chases usually start on the expressway, but often diverge off and onto local village streets.
They never end well.
In one recent case, a guy stole a car, ditched it, broke into a house, threatened a lady at gunpoint, stole her car, and then headed east about 20 miles before spinning out and hitting a small pickup head-on.
It’s now common for somebody to start a conversation with “Hey, did you hear about the chase the other day?”
The Hatfields and McCoys Back at it Again
It’s not just limited to rage on the roads. We’ve all seen it on social media.
I belong to an online group related to Appalachian History. One person posted wondering about J.D. Vance’s family history. I responded with a link to J.D.’s family tree, which I had just found.
I was only trying to help.
Somewhere in J.D.’s tree exists a link to the famous Hatfield family, one-half of the Hatfield-McCoy feud. I believe it’s a relationship through marriage.
This sort of thing is interesting for some of us. And we know it’s not for everybody.
In the initial discussion there existed a genuine interest from well-meaning folks. No bad intentions or talk of politics in any way.
Then all hell broke loose.
Arguments and vitriol emerged, coming out of nowhere, directed at J.D. Vance, Donald Trump, Hillbilly Elegy, MAGA, and those perceived as wanting to false-identify with the Hatfields or McCoys.
It was all unprovoked and had nothing to do with the purpose of the conversation.
One lady directed a comment at me, correcting me on a statement I never made.
It was the Hatfields and McCoys all over again.
I didn’t get involved.
The Kettle Guy
I volunteered for the Salvation Army over the holidays last year, doing 2 or 4-hour shifts manning the Kettle outside our local store. It was fun and satisfying, and I will do it again this year.
I did 54 hours in total and encountered hundreds of people. I can only report one bad actor. That’s probably a good thing.
A short, older guy walked up and instead of inserting his spare change in the slots on the kettle, he threw it all underhand in the general direction of it from about 10 feet away.
The coins bounced off the kettle, the stand, and the sliding glass door, and me, before landing on the ground and rolling under the feet of other customers.
I didn’t get mad. But that wouldn’t have been my reaction thirty years ago.
I just set out to collect the coins and welcomed the physical movement in the cold weather. I gathered them all up and deposited them in the kettle.
Happy Holidays.
Human Nature
Maybe it’s just the way we are.
Like nasty memes that spread on social media, we may be a hateful, disgusting breed of animal whose only true talent is spreading hate.
Yikes, my keyboard just took a depressing turn. Not what I wanted to do or want to believe.
The good guys are ahead, even if it sometimes feels like the score is just 51–49.
But we can look anywhere in history and see it.
Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote a poem about man’s inhumanity to man. It was a topic in my high school literature class and I never forgot it.
Man’s Inhumanity to Man
by Robert Burns
Many and sharp the numerous ills
Inwoven with our frame;
More pointed still, we make ourselves
Regret, remorse and shame;
And man, whose heaven-erected face
The smiles of love adorn,
Man’s inhumanity to man,
Makes countless thousands mourn.
The Immediacy of Technology Amplifies Things
Geography greatly influences the flow of information and has had a major impact on history.
The United States is surrounded by vast oceans, which can help with protection. Sailing ships didn’t move fast and could be seen far on the horizon before evasive action had to be taken.
In Appalachia, mountains can separate communities because they are hard, if not impossible, to traverse. People would spend their entire lives not leaving their valley and never knowing their cousins on the other side of the mountain.
In the old days, information did not travel fast. I think I’ve read that news of Lincoln’s assassination took weeks or months to make it to the folks in hard-to-reach areas of our country.
Now, with the internet, there is a new and immediate geography.
A single post, well-intentioned or not, can reach anybody in the world instantly. It can land in the minds of those who agree, disagree, or don’t even understand what they have just read.
Time and distance are no longer a natural throttle.
The effect is a little like the magnifying glass trick, where you can focus the sun through it and burn a leaf or piece of wood.
Living in an Era of Increasing Returns
I read a book about 15 years ago written by a UCLA professor. He described our current America as being in the era of increasing returns. This quarter’s earnings increase of 3% needs to be next quarter’s 3.25%, and 3.5% in the following quarter.
He also said it was in our DNA. Our ancestors who migrated here were the risk takers, the adventurers, those willing to put it all on the line and risk it for a better life. His case was that somehow genetics also factored in.
Raising families, keeping a roof over our heads, food on the table, and bills paid is challenging. To say the least.
Add to this a daily commute to stressful jobs behind corporate walls.
Behind those walls are the corporate pressures. Mergers and acquisitions, profit and earnings, projects and deadlines, and often competing and conflicting priorities. And annoying people.
Add to that the fact there is no or very little job security. Circle that back to keeping a roof over our heads and food on the table.
In IT it’s common to be on-call. Getting paged or alerted in the middle of the night to fix a problem, all while being expected to show up the next day on time and expected to put in 8–10 hour days.
My Taste of Early Retirement
In 2012 and 2013 I worked 65-hour weeks regularly. It was bad and stressful.
This occurred after an acquisition and a rough project to shoe-horn their old search engine onto our new platform on a short schedule.
I focused on my work. I couldn’t let my family or my work team down.
In April 2014, my boss called me into her office and asked what it would take to keep me from quitting. I hadn’t complained and had no intention of doing so.
I thought she was kidding, to be honest.
So I put my foot up on her desk and played along. We had a rapport where I could barely get away with this sort of thing.
“I want every Friday off this summer from Memorial Day to Labor Day.”
She came back with “Granted. Not get your ass out of my office.”
And we can’t forget family life. Isn’t that the most important thing? The kids have activities. There are birthdays, holidays, and open houses to attend.
There is very little time for a break. People need to recharge.
All these factors come together and can be too much. It can often leave the people closest to you disappointed.
This accumulation of pressure everywhere can be distressing to many.
The combustion that can follow has to go somewhere, and it can often be directed at others.
Maybe this is what’s happening out there.
The Squeeze
Years ago I heard a political theory that stated to move a society in a desired direction, you have to squeeze the middle from the bottom up.
If you want to turn the dial up even more, the squeeze can also be from the top down and both sides.
Sinister shit.
It’s hard not to feel that the Average American is getting squeezed from all sides.
Intentional or not, it’s a squeeze nonetheless.
Covid
Covid was a big event, and stressful for all of us. You remember the days in 2020 and 2021.
We had to wear masks and there were forced vaccinations to keep our jobs.
The Covid shutdowns impacted so many things. Hospitals and healthcare are just one example.
Opinions on the whole matter divided people and views became polarized.
Well, enough on that, and I don’t mean to stir up bad memories or political viewpoints.
My only intention here is to consider Covid as yet another factor contributing to our collective stress.
It was a big, huge event, and an entirely new one for everybody.
Patterns in Nature and Chaos Theory
In “Chaos — Making a New Science”, James Gleick describes the Malthusian difference equation on Page 63. It’s a simple mathematical formula used by biologists to model fluctuations in populations.
My thoughts about an increasing population of anger reminded me of this equation.
The equation is:
r-next = rx(1-x)
Where x is the value of a population and the variable r describes the rate of change. It computes the next value of x for the next period and repeats.
It’s just a simple model of course.
I don’t know how anybody could define all the variables and values and arrive at a formula that measures fluctuations of societal anger.
There are four basic outcomes with this formula:
- A population grows until it reaches a smooth equilibrium. Here x = .02 and r = 1.9. The population grows until it reaches stability.
2. A population grows until it encounters a short period of adjustments before reaching an equilibrium. Here x = .02 and r = 2.7. The population grows, overshoots, and undershoots, before reaching stability.
3. A population grows at a rate where it explodes, and course corrections are chaotic and never reach stable patterns. Here x = .02 and r = 3.7, and the population grows, overshooting and undershooting continually and never reaching a stable level.
This is known as chaos.
4. A population grows at a higher rate until it destroys itself. Boom! No graph is needed.
There are other examples, where order and equilibrium somehow emerge in the middle of chaotic periods. These periods may be long or brief, and I’ve seen them in my books and Conway’s Game of Life.
Anyway, the view of this whole rage thing made me think of a population of rage that appears to be escalating.
If reality matches this simple model, could we be headed for chaos?
And Finally
So here’s to my friend and his wife and their retirement plans. They are buying a 5th wheel, going to tow their motorcycles and travel the country.
I hope the road rage simmers down for them.
Thank you for reading.
