By Quin Hillyer at The Washington Examiner;
[with tongue slightly in cheek]
Reasonable, decent people should be really angry about how angry everybody is.
In today’s America, there really is no good excuse for mass anger. So the mass anger we see from left, right and center is so out of line that it should really make us mad.
Oh, and everybody else should just shut up when they insist that anybody else shut up. I mean, just shut up already.
Let’s first consider the anger. In America today, materially speaking, life is good. Damn good.
As I’ve reported elsewhere, household incomes are actually higher than they were when people were celebrating Ronald Reagan’s booming mid-1980s economy. Meanwhile, inflation-adjusted prices of basic foodstuffs such as eggs and milk are substantially lower; gasoline costs the same; and of course electronics and tech-related daily-life aids and entertainment are dramatically less expensive. Likewise, modern technology allows us to do so many chores so much more quickly than ever that we should have more, not less, discretionary time available.
If you have a TV in every room of your house, don’t complain about being in debt. You chose your own debt. If your household has as many cars as people old enough for a license, you’re not poor. If your children spend most of their weekends at the mall and spend money every time, you’re not suffering financially.
Where many individuals or communities do suffer more than they did in 1986, the fault often isn’t some externally imposed burden but individual failings. If you get yourself addicted to illegal narcotics, that’s your fault. If you have a broken home because you “ran around” on your spouse, that’s your fault. Government didn’t do that to you. Society didn’t do that to you. You did it. So why are you angry at anybody else?
Maybe you’re angry that somebody has a different opinion than you. Grow up….
The whole column is at this link. And yes, it does get a lot more positive during the rest of it, especially about how great America is.
