As I noted in comments, it’s the angriest I’ve been since 2015 when Syriza crumbled to European austerity. The day that happened I was furious. I wrote an angry post and went for a walk, still boiling with anger. About half an hour later I thought “this is ridiculous, it isn’t helping the Greeks and I don’t like it” and the anger went away.
It was odd, in the sense that we often have thoughts and feelings we don’t like, but usually they don’t go away just because think “I’d rather not feel this way.”
But a fair bit of it stuck, and over the past eight years my anger has reduced radically, and on those occasions when I do get angry, I can end it quickly if I want to. I was angry when I wrote that post, but I didn’t go to bed angry.
From about the run-up to the Iraq war till 2014 I was angry most of the time. Lots of dead people, tortured people, raped people, hungry people, homeless people that didn’t need to be any of those things.
Our leaders and too many of us (remember approval for the Iraq war polled over 70%) were creating Hell when we could just as easily create Heaven.
In many ways the current Gaza war reminds me of the run-up to and early Iraq war. The same feeling of frustrated helplessness while vast evil was planned and performed. Iraq didn’t radicalize me, Obama confirming he was neoliberal scum and condemning a billion+ people to die by slamming the pedal down on climate change did, but Iraq turned me into an activist, a role I occupied from 2002 to 2009, and emotionally inhabited till 2014.
Anyway, what I learned in 2014, and what I grounded into my consciousness in 2015 was that being angry all the time was destroying me. My health, my effectiveness and my enjoyment of life. My anger wasn’t hurting the people doing all the evil, they could care less, and why should they care, they were well off or rich, powerful and living very pleasant lives while I was poor, sick and angry?
The only person my anger was hurting was me.
Don’t get me wrong, if my anger had let me, in some sense, win, I’d have taken the hit. I was committed, oh was I committed. But it didn’t work.
Andrew Cockburn once asked someone working for him if their hate was pure and I get it. Still is. I won’t pretend or cavil, or pretend to be a Saint. I hate Obama. I hate Biden. I hate Trump. I hate Clinton and Bush. Netanyahu. Didn’t use to hate Trudeau but genocide support has pushed me over.
My hate is pure, but these days not intense. Just a sort of background contempt (the most dangerous emotion, by far, contempt.)
At the same time I feel this odd empathy and sympathy for them. I get it, I feel it, the self-righteousness (especially evident in Obama and Trudeau), the love of power and adulation, the sense that they are the ones who know and make the hard decisions and so on.
Ben Gurion knew he was evil, and I respect him for that, but most of our leaders think they are good.
(And no, don’t succumb to the bullshit of “well if I think they’re evil, and they think they’re good, who knows who’s right. That’s garbage. Have you aided a genocide recently? Invaded a country based on lies? Denied the children of Iraq cancer medicines? Bombed a hospital or pharmaceutical plant? Made millions homeless then effectively made being homeless illegal?” )
Life is good for the people in charge: the senior pols, the CEOS, the high level executives, the tools who run NGOs (whose workers lives are mostly shit).
Anyway, I write this because I bet a lot of my readers feel the same way, and recognize a lot of what I’m saying.
Rule #1: don’t let the monsters ruin your life. Don’t let them control your emotions. Surges of anger are fine, but don’t live there. Seek out joy and happiness and as much as possible fight from there.
But remember also that emotions like hate, anger and contempt, in controlled doses exist to let you know who is an enemy, who shouldn’t have power, and who is dangerous to you. Such emotions are dangerous, absolutely, because they can be weaponized by others to turn you against people who don’t deserve them. See Jews, WWII and Palestinians, today. See Americans who think Putin is a bigger threat to them than Biden or Trump or the CEO of any Fortune 500 company.
What’s happening in Gaza is an atrocity. By all means do something, but don’t let it make your miserable, because if you do, the bastards have a victory, the suffering of their enemy, you.
But remember, oh yes, always remember. And remembering, act if you ever have the chance.
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