April 8, 2013
I’m not entirely sure how or why this happened, but as a society, we seem to have distanced ourselves from anger.
I have a great affection for rage, and yet, I see it as an underprivileged emotion. We all associate stirrings of fury with road rage, with violence, with drug abuse, and mental or emotional instability. People forget that while passion can be another word for earnestness or lust, the greatest passion is often fuelled by frustration and the fiery fury of a thousand suns.
Personally, I think anger has a bad name.
There isn’t enough outrage in this world, and it has been my goal to bring back the anger.
I’d like to propose a ground breaking suggestion here: being angry and being eloquent, intelligent and measured in your argument are not two mutually exclusive ideals.
In fact, I believe that stronger verbal manifestations of rage are required in modern politics to show that politicians:
a) Live and breathe the courage of their convictions, and
b) Are actually human beings and not sound-bite driven robots.
I’m so sick of the calm, cool, collected, measured voices on Q and A, or even in the bearpit, on the evening news and coming through in print. I’m so sick of politicians discussing issues that strike at the core of humanity, issues that are so very serious and so very deserving of personal outrage, like they’re discussing some spilt milk. I’m so sick of the even keel patterns of speech they use, like they’re talking to a bunch of children. I’m so sick of knowing that they’re just reading off a teleprompter.
I want YELLING.
I want STRENGTH in their voices.
I want INTONATION.
I want VICIOUS, LACERATING words coming out of mouths with BARED TEETH.
I WANT THE PASSION BACK IN POLITICS.
I want what it USED to be, not what it has been diluted to.
How can politicians discuss poverty, disease, the Intervention, drug abuse, depression, homelessness, death and war like they’re commenting on the weather? I’d like to say that the answer is entirely because anger is supposedly a petty, unprofessional emotion. I’d like to say that the public apparently don’t respond to passionate speeches in the same way they respond to being lulled to sleep and treated like a bunch of blind, applauding seals.However, I think the real answer is far more serious. The fact of the matter is that these politicians fail to express any outrage because they’ve suffocated the requisite empathy. Emotional and political discourse have been compartmentalised; this is so very detrimental to the quality of the latter. Furthermore, frustration is best sought from experience of suffering, of which they usually possess very little.
And while this problem will never be solved unless we have affirmative action insanity and install only society’s most underprivileged people in positions of political leadership, I believe there is an alternative solution:
We must ask politicians to find their empathy again.
We must ask them to break out of their manufactured, cookie cutter shells, their hideous pastel blazers and coordinated pant suits. We must ask them to stop spouting the party line with neither courage nor conviction. We must ask them to say what they really think, what they really feel, and what they want to share in the public discourse in the fleeting years they’ve found their opinions worth something on Earth. It’s possible that at first, they won’t know what to say. But once they get back in touch with that healthy molten lava simmering underneath, I’m sure torrents of deliciously honest volatility will spew forth.
Penny Wong, I want to hear your outrage about gay marriage. We all KNOW you’re fuming anyway, scream it from the rooftops!
Julie Bishop, I want to know of the fury you’re feeling serving a hack, or your anger as a woman that he’s painted in such a condemnatory fashion. Or just the fact that you think you’d probably just do a better job. I also want to hear you vent about people interrupting you, and how hard it must be to maintain hair so filled with secrets. I don’t want to see your burning hate just through your eyes, I want to hear it too.
Tony Abbott, I want to hear your frustrations about every woman hating your guts. I want to hear you defend yourself in the angry way we know you want to. I want to know if it’s your own fault that you’re never convincing, or whether the standard political turn of phrase is just too bland to make your objections seem real.
Kevin Rudd, I want to hear you bitch and moan about faceless men and your awful haircut and how Jillard is messing it up. I want to hear you howl over losing a spot as a foreign minister to being in the back bench slop heap. Let’s be honest, you don’t have a great deal further to fall at this point.
God knows the political process is the most frustrating mechanism that ever was – so why is it that we force our pollies into being simpering, one dimensional little wimps? Where is the fire? Where is the fury? Where is the rage?
One would think it had been entirely diverted to 2GB. Alan Jones has a monopoly on the rage. He’s obviously part of the reason that anger and insanity are so closely associated.
I propose we set a trend. Next time you hear something awful, something racist, something sexist or repugnant to the ear, don’t stomach your rage like a ‘reasonable person’ and move on. Corrode its sentiment with a venomous (while logical), vitriolic (while eloquent) and cutting (while intelligent) retort. Be surgical in your analysis but caustic in your delivery. Give your rebuttal an acerbic X Factor – and your criticism of life, the world, the system, the enemy, will rise above for its genuine nature, imprinting on the hearts and minds of your enemies.
If you want to see the tactics of wrath in action, here is a short clip of disgraced American politician Anthony Weiner in full flight. Take notes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omM2s4wBPRQ
