POLL Says American Rage Is Alive And Well

Mad as hell airplane

“Hope and change”…remember that campaign slogan from just a few years ago?  The current Occupier of the Oval Office was going to make things all better in America and allow the planet to heal?  (The planet is constantly trying to blow itself up, whatever made the Barack Obama think he had the power to heal it?  Don’t answer that.)

Now that we are in the last year of that bold experiment in “let’s ignore all American values and traditions in order to win an international popularity contest” the mainstream mass media sorts are starting to measure just how much of a frenzy the American people are in over all the change that hope sent sideways.  Esquire Magazine (now there’s a stalwart political organ for you) published the results of a recent poll conducted by NBC regarding rage in the United States.  The results are pretty predictable, leading one to wonder just how Pavlovian the American media has become.  Take the first question:

About how often do you hear or read something in the news that makes you angry?

A few times a day 31%
Once a day 37%
Once a week 20%
Once a month 5%
Rarely 6%

Anyone who lives in the world is going to get angry about something somewhere.  But what does Esquire and by extension, NBC, want us to know about this?

Seventy-three percent of whites say they get angry at least once a day, as compared with 56 percent of blacks and 66 percent of Hispanics. Seventy-seven percent of Republicans get angry at least once a day, as compared with 67 percent of Democrats.The least angry household-income brackets: the very rich ($150,000-plus) and the very poor ($15,000 and less). The most angry: the middle of the middle class ($50,000 to $74,999).

Hence, there is credence to the concept of the angry white, middle class, just like the narrative tells us, with one caveat:

53% of women are angrier
44% of men
58% of white women are angrier
51% of white men
44% of nonwhite women
32% of nonwhite men

Just exactly what are these people angry about?  The poll doesn’t really say at the top (the details are buried far enough down that busy readers will have given up looking before getting to women being more angry about billionaires buying elections than men), but does constantly report on the racial breakdown of what people think about various former propaganda memes such as “The American Dream” and “Is America the most powerful country on earth?”  (When the stock markets quit calculating their cash in dollars and the Chinese quit stealing our technology to copy it, we can ask that question.  Until then….)  The results of the survey reflect the media messaging that has been pounding the public for years.  This is how Esquire presented the findings.

What’s your sense of America’s place in the world?

  • The U. S. is the most powerful country in the world.41%  
  • The U. S. was once the most powerful country but isn’t anymore. 54%  
  • The U. S. was never the most powerful country. 4%

Do you think the American dream—if you work hard, you’ll get ahead—is alive and well?

• Blacks are more likely than whites and Hispanics to say the dream is alive (45 percent versus 35 and 34).• Men are more likely than women to say the dream is alive (40 percent versus 33).• The group most down on the American dream: Americans between the ages of 45 and 64, i.e., the ones who are sweating about retirement.

The presentation of the actual results leaves something to be desired, but the poll itself does give us an idea of just what the people of the country think about what is going on in our lives: even the people who are supposed to be lulled to sleep by a media telling them what to think.

Or are they being told to be angry about?  Consider this question:

If your were going to attend a protest, what would your sign say?

#BlackLivesMatter 14%

#BlackLivesMatter Is a Hate Group. 6%

Make English America’s OfficialLanguage. 24%

We Don’t Build Walls.We Tear Them Down. 17%

Keep Your Hands off My Uterus. 12%

Abortion Is Murder. 13%

Don’t Tell Me How to Dress. Tell Them Not to Rape. 18%

We Came Unarmed. This Time. 6%

The NRA Kills Our Kids. 10%

We Are the 99 Percent. Occupy Wall Street. 10%

Taxed Enough Already. 36%

We are then told that Republicans answered “Taxed Enough Already,” “Make English America’s Official Language,” and “Abortion is Murder.”  Just what the people have largely been instructed to say, although those three sentiments are true for those who are conservative.

When it comes down to it, this NBC poll as presented by Esquire does demonstrate that Americans are angry and that we have probably been led to the water of being so.  Much of what is presented is class envy and racial divides exploited.  There are no great surprises, but the concept that Americans are angry when we were supposed to be so enamored of hope and change is what reverberates.

For more on this topic, visit American Thinker and The Washington Times.

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Cultural Limits