There’s definitely an anger problem in the United States today, from the President all the way down. There’s also an associated “stupidity” problem. That’s because, as I’ve mentioned before and elsewhere, anger and arrogance make people stupid, particularly the President (who believes everyone else is stupid even as he takes stupid actions).

At least some of the current anger, from what I see, arises from an attitude that can be described as a “are you so stupid that you can’t see” mindset, often fueled in part by stress. But it’s often not so much as willful stupidity as ignorance, either honest or willful. Sometimes, we don’t want to know, and sometimes we really don’t know all that we should.

A great number of people with very firm beliefs are so convinced that they’re right, and that anyone who doesn’t see things the way they do must be stupid. The problem here is that beliefs tend to be based on emotions and feelings and, at times, on the selective use of facts or on facts that only apply to certain segments of the population.

A variation of this came up in the previous blog post, when a reader stated that it was nonsense to make value judgments on the worth of others based on what clothes they wear, and another got angry when I said that such judgments weren’t nonsensical in the real world because such judgements are still made and have consequences. The fact is that both can be true.

On the surface, there shouldn’t have been such a reaction over apparel. The fact that there was suggests that a lot more is going on. The majority of Americans are unhappy with the President and both political parties. That’s hardly surprising when the cost of living is going up for everyone, and when the cost of higher education, the supposed ticket to personal prosperity, is at an all-time high and when an increasing percentage of graduates can’t pay off the student loans it took to get that education or can’t obtain the funding to buy a house.

Domestic violence has increased, mainly among adults in the 18–34-year-old age group, not coincidentally, the age group hit hardest by economic shortfalls. The adverse economics aren’t as likely to hit a professional family in their forties or fifties nearly so hard. But they’re still there and create the stress that can fuel anger.

Increases in road rage incidents continue, and that’s definitely a case where rage makes one stupid – you’re going to shoot and possibly kill someone for cutting you off, and spend years in jail or thousands of dollars avoiding it to save a few minutes?

I don’t have an answer for the increasing anger, except to say, take a long look at those who make you angry before you lash out… and it wouldn’t hurt to consider the costs of that anger.

And, at the same time, I can see that doing either is getting harder and harder as personal and societal stress levels continue to increase.

A line in a reader response caught my attention.

“Not everyone can afford those better clothes and the idea that they were lesser because of it was nonsense back then just like it is now.”

The fact is that while clothes do not make the person, they do reflect, to a certain extent, where a person stands in society. All societies throughout history have employed certain aspects of human representation to reflect where people stand in that society, whether those aspects are tattoos, hairdos, the size of ear lobes, styles and amount of expensive clothing, or something else.

Clothes have certainly played that role in western European culture, as have they in technologically advanced far eastern cultures and others as well.

Admittedly, all these forms of persona self-statement and/or representation effectively rest on comparative economic or social/religious position, but they’re far from nonsense, because the people with power in complex, materialistic societies do want to distinguish themselves from people who they believe are lesser. While one could even make the argument that “clothes competition” is a far less wasteful use of wealth and power to gain or demonstrate position, the problem is that the mega-wealthy simply escalate the level of “display” into the mega-mansions and mega-yachts now in vogue.

There’s also a reason why soldiers wear uniforms, or why students in some elite private schools do as well, and it has to do with removing clothing as a weapon of overt social positioning.

I’d agree that that greater or more extensive display hardly measures human worth, but it does measure economic success… of someone, even if the wealth is inherited.

But to say that better clothes as a display of wealth, power, and position is nonsense shows a lack of understanding of culture and human nature.

I can recall when I was a teenager – more than sixty years ago – my mother telling me that men should not go downtown [in Denver] without wearing a coat and tie, preferably a suit and tie, and that women should always wear gloves and a hat. Jeans were not allowed in public schools, and most private schools required either uniforms or had strict dress codes.

There were written invitations for dinners and parties, and those invitations required written replies either accepting or declining the invitation.

Police officers, teachers, doctors, and even lawyers were respected, as was age. And back then almost 70% of Americans could afford to buy a house (unlike the 43% today).

Then, during and after the end of the Vietnam War (and it was a war) matters changed swiftly, especially for social mores.

When I first went to Washington as a legislative assistant to a newly elected Congressman in 1973, I was twenty-nine, and almost all the Congressional staff directors were men (and a very few women) in their forties and fifties, if not even older. Ten years later, at thirty-nine, I was one of those staff directors, and most of the staff directors were my age, if not younger.

All of that is a form of nostalgia and ignores some very basic ills in American society at the time. Women and minorities effectively had far, far fewer rights than white males, and in parts of the South blacks had almost no rights at all (and we still haven’t gotten where we should be). The air was close to unbreathable at times in most major cities, and the water in most lakes and rivers undrinkable and unswimmable. In the 1960s, cars were still deathtraps in accidents.

But back then, people talked to each other and knew their neighbors. And they could talk to people who had different politics and religion. Now, it seems that far too many Americans live in self-selected internet bubbles with increasing intolerance of those who believe differently. Too many also ignore invitations without declining or show up without accepting.

We also have increasing amounts of violence by people who act as though the world should bend to their whims or desires. Road rage was essentially unheard of in the 1950s or 1960s. Shooting someone for “dissing” has also become more and more common.

What’s also been forgotten is that the way people dress reflects a certain amount of respect – or lack of it – for others. Wearing pajamas and flipflops on an airplane or sweaty gym clothes to a restaurant isn’t only poor taste and possibly unsafe, but it’s disrespectful to others, an arrogation of narcissism, if you will.

No, the past wasn’t wonderful, by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems like we’ve shed the good along with the bad, and that’s not the way to build a future.