Is everybody really so angry?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So I just read yet another article about how angry everybody is nowadays, and how that will affect the election.

I know the economy is still in the dumps, and I read about the anger out there in articles like that, but I just don’t see it in my personal life.

Most of the people I know who were layed off during the depths of the recession have now found new jobs.

Nothing about my own job is different. I go to work every day, see the same people, do essentially the same tasks, as I have for the last several years. Nothing to complain about there. Things could change, but I have enough work to last for many months.

My personal life is better than ever, as some people who read my posts may know. I have a ten-month-old baby son, born last December, who is the light of my life. Born in the middle of the recession, one look at him and I forget all my problems.

I kind of understand the anger, but I do not feel it at all.

2

You know, it’s threads like this that really piss me off.

3

I guess it depends on where you live, I haven’t worked full time in 2 and a half years. I know lots of people that have been unemployed well over a year. I know people who are first time ever on food stamps.

Here in Illinois it’s a mess. Our libraries are closed early, the public transit is cut, and the politicians don’t care.

I don’t see any sign of the economy getting better, though the recession was over a year ago, according to most.

People get mad because a lot of them will never recover. Even if I got a job tomorrow at the pay I was making it’ll take me about seven years to be in the position I was in 2.5 years ago. And I’ll never be as well off as I once was.

And I am just me, no kids, no house, nothing. I can imagine how hard it’d be for others.

Many people simply will have to lower their standards forever. This is not a pleasent thing, especially if you realize this is the last ten or twenty years of your life.

Mr Obama didn’t start this mess, and I accept that. But he and the Democrats have been in for two years. You can’t just keep saying “I didn’t start it.” You made promises to fix it. Well I don’t see ANY SIGN it’s getting better. In fact it seems in my area to be worse.

The one thing I noticed about the “Great Recession” is people who kept their jobs and had no huge outstanding loans, really didn’t get effected much. I think it’s interesting that in Chicago, I go to an upscale neighborhood in Lincoln Park and it’s still like it was two years ago, but my lower income neighborhood is a mess. Business closed, gangs have come back, drug dealing in the open again.

I think it depends on your location, IF you lost your job and such, if you’re angry.

4

I’m angry at the angry fuckers - the ones who’ve made damn sure this prez couldn’t make any progress, and now want to credit his incompetence for their obstructionism. That is how anger will affect my vote.

5

I’m pretty angry. I don’t talk about it at work, but it doesn’t take much to set me off. Like MarkXXX, my once-ok neighborhood is slowly going down the tubes.

California is deeply fucked up, and because it’s possible for a minority to block any money-spending/money-collecting legislation, it’s just not going to get better.

6

If there’s anything that does annoy me, it is that.

7

California government is definitely screwed up, largely for the reasons you state. I live here. What else is new?

8

I deleted a long rant about my friends who are unemployed, the money woes of my family, the desperate need for my grandmother’s heath care, that woman who’s spending a half million a day to get a job she appears not to understand, my fears my job is going to be sent overseas, my & my SO’s medical woes, and (like MarkXXX above) the crumbling schools and infrastructure of my town. I think the drought was in there somewhere too.

And for the record, my SO and I are white-collar employed and have “good” health insurance. We own our own house, and live a middle-middle-class life. We vote, serve on juries and are productive members of society. But none of that (except maybe the house) is going to protect us when we’re old and poor.

9

I’m an angry, bitter person when it comes to politics and the state of this country. :frowning: I feel like there are no good, honest politicians and maybe there never were. Government is for nothing but red tape and oppression. More and more of our rights are being slipped out from under us every day. I don’t think that, in the end, how we vote matters one damn bit.

I’ve started avoiding the news. When it’s time to vote, I research each candidate’s views on issues and I choose the lesser of two (sometimes three) very evil evils. I never watched any major network news channel to begin with but I’ve always been one to get online and read stories from different news sites. But I noticed that I was coming home nearly every day in such a bitter, fatalistic mood and that I was only stressing myself out. Also, my partner certainly didn’t need to listen to me ranting every evening about whatever f’ed up batch of news I’d exposed myself to that day.

So, of my own volition, I have scratched out a shallow hole and stuffed my head into it for the time being.

10

Who would that be?
Thanks!

11

If it did, They wouldn’t let us do it. :slight_smile:

12

Meg Whitman. She’s running for governor against Jerry Brown and she’s had ads on TV and radio for what feels like two years now. So many ads, I think even if I was going to vote for her I’d still hate her. The half-million may be a slight exageration, but she’s “invested” fuck-ton of money in this race. I also hate that she keeps calling it an investment.

13

Vote Yes on Prop. 25.

14

I’m with you on that.

15

That’s sort of the way I feel, except that I came about it from a different point of view. The news is so bad every day that it makes me depressed. Yet everything in my own life is perfectly fine. Better than ever. And the same for most of the people that I know – my friends and family. So I think maybe I’ll just stop watching the news.

16

I would definitely say I’m angry, but I really haven’t been hit too hard in the recession overall, other than watching my investments and 401(k) take a major nosedive, and I am more than 20 years from retirement, so I know they will recover. I have a good job, though I did ultimately take a $10,000 pay cut to get out of a horrible job where I probably would have been laid off anyway about a month after I ended up leaving, so that was definitely the right thing to do.

The truth is, however, the recession and economy have created tremendous uncertainty. I feel like there is a lot of “waiting for the other shoe to drop” going on in terms of business spending, jobs, etc. I work in defense/government services, and there is ALWAYS talk of major program cuts right around the corner with the feeling additional money will be pulled from the defense budget to fund social programs. No matter what your opinion is about that, I just wish that if it was going to happen, it would go ahead and do so, and if not, then it would be declared that it wouldn’t. Instead, budgets seem to be in constant limbo. Even without a huge effect on me directly, many of my friends have lost their jobs and I can honestly say that every single one of them has been asked to do more with less resources. The result is that everyone bitches about how lousy their job is when we get together and it just seems like no one can have a good time anymore.

Though I am conservative, I don’t blame the Democrats/Obama, and have a fierce loyalty to the Executive Office of the President no matter who is in power. That said, I do find it strange they are ineffective in many of their actions. Presumably the Democrats must have raised objections when the Republicans were in power, and yet I feel there was still progress going on back then, even if it went in a direction others didn’t like.

17

Doesn’t it strike you as poor taste to gloat about your own happy circumstances at a time when you know others are suffering through no fault of their own?

18

Not if you use it to claim that you’re better mentally balanced and your opinions should have more weight than the angry ones of the suffering folks.

19

I’m quick to anger, and yet it passes very quickly. So unless a politician pisses me off on the day OF an election, he’s in the clear.

20

OP, you’re one of the lucky ones. Most of the folks I know have lost their jobs or at a minimum had their hours or salaries cut way back. The Other Shoe and I are thousands of dollars in debt from being out of work for two years apiece, much of that overlapping. And, shit, I live in north Texas, which hasn’t been hit nearly as hard as some other areas. So while yay for you that you’ve kept your job - and that your friends have found new ones - know that all those news articles aren’t just making shit up to fill space.