Anger

Wednesday

Peter Wood

Behind the anger of the young American Hamas apologists

“Goddess, sing of the cataclysmic wrath,” opens Emily Wilson’s new translation of The Iliad. The goddess Homer summoned isn’t named, but it is usually assumed he meant Calliope, the muse of epic poetry —and much later, circus music. But Homer might have meant Lyssa, the Greek goddess of mad rage and frenzy. She was well known to the ancients. The Romans called her Furor or Rabies — which gets the idea across fairly well. The Norse had two versions: Odr, who represented fury and frenzy, and Fenrir, a giant wolf who represents uncontrollable savagery.    By whatever name she may have been called, Lyssa appears to have been active in human affairs for a very long time.

anger pro-palestine hamas

Monday

Peter Wood

A flag under foot

On my way to work in Midtown Manhattan each day, I pass down 50th Street. Near the corner of Broadway, not long ago someone glued an American flag to the sidewalk and set fire to it. The scorched remnants cry out in resistance to the attempted insult and erasure. I have no idea what protest prompted this indignity, or whether the person who sealed the flag to where pedestrians would trample it was the same who decided to set it on fire. I haven’t noticed any passersby taking special note of Old Glory reduced to such an inglorious state, surrounded by cigarette butts and other debris. This isn’t New York City’s fault. We are amid more pressing crises. The subway entrance nearby — one of the main points of access to Midtown — reeks of urine and sometimes worse.

flag

Saturday

Peter Wood

Why discord delights

Finding fault takes finesse. Oh, anybody can complain. We are a nation of complainers, carping at everything from breakfast vittles to late-night TV. We complain about our politicians, our prognosticators and our pop stars. But these complaints run like water down a windowpane in the same old channels to the same wet destination. Finding fault — finding new faults in a familiar subject — is much harder. It takes talent. It takes a critic. I am well aware that these days a lot of Americans complain that we are too divided. The nation bristles with parti pris. We revile the exponents of political views opposed to our own. We sneer at their provincialism, their pissant pettiness and their lack of civility, for which they should rightly be crushed.

discord

Friday

Peter Wood

Old Glory, new anger

America is no longer just angry. We have become a nation of wrath. It is a risky emotional condition, recognizable by our desire to obliterate our opponents. Wrath doesn’t seek reconciliation. It wants revenge. Nor does wrath want to accommodate what it can’t control. It wants to rub the slate clean. There is a wrathfulness of the political left, stemming from visceral hatred of Trump and his supporters. But as the left is ascendant in the seats of power, it can pursue its effort to extinguish its opposition via the instruments of state. The wrathfulness on the political right is another story. Wrath reaches its zenith when people feel not just abused but hopeless in the pursuit of any redress.

anger