Are you mad?  Before you answer that, a few things should be considered.  MAD was a favorite magazine of mine when I was 14.  If you’re an Alfred E. Neuman fan, you’re probably MAD (I am), but not necessarily “mad”.  If you’re bouncing around like a bunny on Ecstasy while waiting for the Mother Ship to return for you, some might say you’re “Mad as a March hare”, but you’re probably far from being “mad”.  There are “mad dogs” (and Englishmen – a little tip of my hat to the late, great Joe Cocker) and even mad cows (they always look kind of docile to me).  I’ve heard there are Mad Men working in the advertising business on Madison Avenue, but those guys aren’t really “mad” – they’re just unscrupulous.  There are however multitudes of people who are mad as hell and I’m not talking about the movie directed by Andrew Napier.

Putting my silly verbosity aside for a moment, I have a serious question.  Why are so many people so very angry?  Sure, I can get a little tense if someone sees my turn signal and still whips into a parking place I’ve been waiting for, but I refrain from road rage.  If someone “diss’s me in some way, I get hostile on the inside, but refrain from going publicly ballistic.  No real harm was done, and the insult was not worth the price a response would exact.  However, there are rare moments when, like Walt Kowalski in “Gran Torino”, a person has to go “mano a mano”.  The defense of “Liberty and Justice for All” is the solemn duty of every citizen.  Those we elect, hire and appoint MUST be held accountable in their duties of assisting US in that defense.  Smashing and torching your neighborhood is not accountability nor is it the defense of liberty and justice for all; it is vandalism.

Rioters in various places claim they’re acting up and rebelling against those in authority because of “miscarriages of the public trust” and abuses of power resulting in harm to their “fellow citizens”.  How ironic.  Indeed, there have been nauseating demonstrations of abuse of power by public “servants” ranging from police actions to gross negligence, even obstructions of justice on the part of elected officials.  However, the irony is many of these “demonstrators” are the same individuals who commit crimes against their “fellow citizens”; crimes like robbing or assaulting their neighbors and mob crimes like burning down their own community centers and neighbor owned businesses.

Do the majority of protestors have a plan for how this behavior will bring about change?  No.  They’re just angry.  Why are they angry?  Because someone told them they should have everything they want.  And how have they been taught to get what they want?  They’ve learned from popular culture and media how to adopt a dog pack mentality; resistance to obtaining what is desired is met with viciousness.  Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, writing in “The Antichrist (1895) and “The Will to Power (1901), claimed “What is good? Everything that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power; power itself. What is bad? Everything that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power increases – that a resistance is overcome.”  These lies did not bring the alpha dogs in Baltimore and elsewhere happiness or power.  If they would manage and express their anger in an intelligent manner, public focus would turn back toward injustice, and injustice would crumble under that righteous indignation.

© 2015 Curt Savage Media