Why America is so Angry
Well, a big chunk of the nation (60% of white people is a big chunk of the nation) expresses anger that there is a black president and anger at the real or extrapolated decline in their socially preferred status and majority status.
But most of those people are really angry for the same underlying reason everyone else is angry.
Everyone is angry because the American dream, in economic terms, is dead. People do not feel secure. They are fearful, trying to hang onto their standard of living. They do not feel that their lives will improve going forward. They feel their children's lives will be poorer and less secure than their own.
As to how people process that anger... that depends on what attitudes one has.
I am very angry, and thus more of a socialist than I was. I was a socialist and scary times have made me a Socialist(!) My feelings have been intensified.
Republican voters take the phenomenon (the American Dream is a thing of the past) and scapegoat whoever they are inclined to scapegoat. Their nascent racism provides one pathway for their discontent, as does their nascent sense that liberalism (lessening of authoritarianism, rising secularism, reduction of social control and conformity) is responsible for their ills.
Democratic voters take the phenomenon (the American Dream is a thing of the past) and process it as something the Republicans did.
But America, as a whole, is dealing with the fact that the American Dream is dead. (Even if the old American Dream was unsustainable and/or not available to all, whatever it was, it is still dead.)
Economic insecurity and dislocation increase discontent. Social factors, often peculiar to a group of class, dictate what form discontent will take.
Consider that both Communists and Nazis gained votes in Greece when their economy blew up. This is typical... hard times and broken dreams are consistent with polarization. And populism usually has a scapegoat enemy, but that enemy will be whoever the populism-inflamed group is inclined to see as an enemy.
In the Middle Ages they didn't kill the Jews all the time, or even most of the time. Christians would go burn down the Jewish neighborhood whenever something really bad happened. Like the Black Death, for instance. Or a drought or a bad winter or losing a war... whatever amped up negative feeling, one well-trod pathway of expression of anxiety was violence against local jewery.
A lot of people HATED Bill Clinton in 1994. By 1997 people liked Clinton, despite a pretty offensive scandal.
The economy in 1997 was very strong. If the economy in 1997 had ben very weak the majority would have supported the impeachers.
I know this big picture stuff is anathema to the news and opinion industry because it isn't much of a day-to-day story. It is more engaging if the world is driven by singular events, but broad economic trends are often the real driver. Decrease the number of jobs per capita and ultra-nationaism and communism will both become more popular. It is just what happens.
Surely everyone knew when the long American economic arc turned down that there would be effects, including racism and class-ism and regionalism, as well as a decline in faith in capitalism and more people taking a second look at socialism.
Disappointment and anger find different expressions in different groups, but they will be expressed.
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