Why People Are Angry: Read E.J. Dionne

In explaining the dark and ugly and angry mood that seems to have possessed large pockets of the citizenry in recent months, many commentators highlight populist media figures on the right.  Limbaugh, Beck et al stir the people into an ominous mob, we are told, their motives ranging from the cynical to the paranoid.

The anger is real, to be sure, and a whole host of acts and words originating inside the Beltway and in state houses, stretching across the ideological spectrum, have given it firm warrant. Conservative voices have, indeed, mobilized the popular feeling, but let’s not overlook the role liberal media voices have played in the arousal of conservatives, libertarians, and independents of various stripes. 

Take the example of E. J. Dionne, columnist at The Washington Post. A while back he penned a column republished in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution under the title “Good, bad debt — and knowing the difference.” In it, Dionne aims to distinguish sound approaches to the Federal deficit, claiming a clear difference between “smart debt” and “stupid debt.”  But amid the substantive points are expressions and assertions that seem designed only to infuriate readers who don’t share his premises.

Here is the first sentence:

“There is a pathetic quality to our discussion of deficits and fiscal responsibility because we never face up to how much we need government to do.”

Note the inside-outside contradiction. On one hand, we have “our” and “we,” as Dionne groups himself with the rest of us. On the other hand, we have the stern stance of the judge standing on the outside, assigning a “pathetic quality” and “never face up”-incapacity to, well, everybody.  And that phrase, “how much we need government to do.” How blithely Dionne determines that need, and how bravely he announces the tough truth.

A few sentences later, Dionne asks, “What would a rational approach to the budget look like?” Not a good approach, or an effective one, or a sustainable one, but a rational one. Dionne has the answer: “It would begin by accepting that running deficits at a time of high unemployment is a good thing.”  Is there any more complacent phrase in a debate than “This is a good thing”? It puts the other side in an untenable position, giving them no evidence or argument to which to respond. “Just be quiet,” it says, “and accept the fact that this is, precisely, a good thing.”

A few obvious points follow:

“True, unemployment in our country is still too high.”

“Yet no one should doubt that we must put our long-term fiscal house in order.”

Then Dionne takes up the fiscal plan designed by Republican Congressman Paul Ryan, the “Roadmap for America’s Future,” which aimed to privatize parts of Social Security and turn Medicare into a voucher program. 

“Ryan gets points for being a genuinely nice person,” Dionne says, though what Ryan’s niceness has to do with the point is a mystery.  “But the path he suggests is exactly wrong. Weakening social insurance is the opposite of what the country needs to do now, and it doesn’t even get us to fiscal nirvana.”

Actually, the “nice” comment isn’t so mysterious once you reach the blank assertion “of what the country needs to do now.”  In highlighting what the country needs, along with the “it’s a good thing” phrase above, Dionne isn’t interested in debating ideas and consequences. Those things are already settled.  The real conflict is a moral-psychological one between those who are “rational” and recognize “the good” and those who do not. That’s why the “nice person” remark is revealing.  Dionne notes it because of the noteworthy fact that Ryan is on the wrong side–but he’s still nice!

Here we have on display, in other words, all the condescension and elitism and paternalism that drives so many people to attend Tea Parties, to despise the media and Congress, and to watch Glenn Beck.  The positions they take may be ideological, but the intensity of their fury isn’t. It’s more a case of social psychology, for nothing incenses Americans more than someone far away opining away in better-and-smarter-and-saner-than-thou riffs.