Michael Roth: For the State of the Union: Let's Learn from the Anger from Huffington Post, The - Blog by Michael Roth

Last week's election of the photogenic Scott Brown in Massachusetts has been greeted with stupefaction. How could the unaccomplished Brown take over the seat of the Lion of the Senate? Was it because Martha Coakley was a fabulously inept campaigner? Was it because the White House didn't pay attention to the local dynamics until it was much too late? Was it health care or was it taxes, big government or the poisonous appearance of the words "Yankee Fan?" There is no shortage of theories or explanations, but there is consensus about one thing: the voters were angry, and Scott Brown channeled that anger. In Sunday's New York Times, Sam Tannenhaus recalled some of the populist movements that drew on rage against entrenched institutions. From Huey Long during the Depression to passionate Goldwater devotees in the 1960s, there have always been plenty of citizens who felt that 'extremism is no vice' when they're ticked off. [...] The literary critic Philip Fisher, in a marvelous book entitled The Vehement Passions, writes that "something is disclosed to us in states of vehemence." Anger, he notes, has given rise to calls for justice, for better laws or for a more equitable distribution of the things we care about. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote that...

The Huffington Post is such a mixed bag, but there are gems like these in there. You've got to read this piece. There are a handful of references out to other authors and texts that you should look into as well. We can't list all of them here; it's better to read of them within their original context. Thank God Vehement is available on the Kindle (though we have a paperback as well).