Recreationally angry.
Someone coined that phrase to describe folks who find expressing anger their primary mode of self-expression. They love to hate. I admire the adage. It is spot on. It highlights how the habit of expressing disdain in a tone that betrays a lack of desire for real change has become a go-to pastime.
In June, after a return trip from Scotland, I published a BBC story and the corresponding responses of many UK citizens on the joke now called “No Kings Day.” In both the face-to-face conversations I had with a few courageous people and the usual number of trolls who think they know a thing or two, I saw this trend of recreational anger. I paused to make sure I understood what they were saying and what they wanted. I left completely confused.
Apparently, Trump is a modern-day Caesar, desiring to dismantle the foundation of the United States. He aspires to circumvent Constitutional constraints and make himself into an autocrat who would then “end” the American republic. They scream that they hate him, knowing that there is no stronger word in the English language to express disdain. However, their use of that language doesn’t stop there. They hate the lines at DMV. They hate how emerging data keep undermining the claim that the Earth is heating up. They hate the people who have taken away their bodily autonomy and the right to have an ad hoc abortion; yet, they hate the people who didn’t get vaccinated. When it comes to my body/my choice, they can’t choose what to hate, so they hate both sides. And, as I have discovered, they hate their neighbor as they hate themselves.
Just when I thought there was no end to the hate and delusion, I am proved wrong. They hate what happened in Israel, calling it Genocide. To these recreational haters, they find it perfectly cool to call Israel’s actions Genocide; after all, they “massacred” 60,000 innocent Palestinian people since the October 7th “incursion.” They conveniently forget that the country’s passport that they carry took out 100,000 Japanese in a single night and another three million in the course of a few years because of their three-hour attack at Pearl Harbor that killed 2200 Americans, many of them in their sleep. No credible source has ever called our response to Pearl Harbor a Genocide. Why is Israel’s response to be treated differently from the US one to an event with nearly identical circumstances?
There is another example in our lifetime. The USA intentionally and strategically killed 350,000 Afghans in the month immediately after 9-11. No one called our response to an attack on our homeland a Genocide. Why would we or anyone else, for that matter? We were not about to let that stand. Indeed, since I was born, no single event has brought America together like 911 and the response to strike back with a vengeance at Al Qaeda.
I heard several people say, and one person wrote in that they were woke and proud of it. They are not seeing themselves in the mirror the way sane people do.
To start, woke people love diversity, but not ideas. They have no issues with “women” with penises being in women’s prison cells or in girls’ locker rooms. They are OK with a drinking age of 21 to prevent young people from getting hurt, but have no issues with young girls having their body parts chopped off without their parents’ permission. They think girls need to try harder when a biological man signs up to compete at a state championship and robs them of their just reward. Where is the common sense?
People loved Abraham Lincoln until the woke people showed up. Now, they are removing his name from schools. They claim to be striving to be a color-blind society, and we need to start at the top of society. As such, they supported Biden’s choice to discard all applicants who weren’t black women to be a Supreme Court Justice. Yet, when questioned about their position, they state that their ultimate goals are for no one to see or judge on the basis of race. I can’t keep a straight face here.
They hate guns and seek their removal from mainstream society, but when there is a problem, they call 911, because they know that people will come to help them…carrying guns. 
You can’t change reality by publicly getting angry. They think that with enough of a consortium, you can change human nature. They don’t see the difference between reality and their mommy.
As a final line, I asked Grok if there were any similarities between Chairman Mao’s idea for a Revolution and the current woke revolution. The answer was, “yes, there are notable similarities between Mao’s cultural revolution and the current ‘woke’ revolution in their focus on social justice, identity politics, equity mandates, and cultural reconfiguration.” There was more, but you get the point.
Anger is not fun. It is not recreation. Engage in a dialogue, and perhaps you will get a smile back.
