Angry Americans

An excerpt from Paul Starobin's classic Atlantic piece on national anger:

Although public anger tends toward cyclical peaks and troughs, its varieties fall into
well-established taxonomical grooves. There really aren't any altogether new kinds of anti-establishmentarian anger in Americaa country that since its birth has been a congenial breeding ground for this sort of animosity. But even if such anger is a fixed part of America's genetic code, mutations occur as the various strains adapt to a changing political, social, and cultural environment. A catalogue of the forms of social anger in America circa 2003 reflects the nation's evolution as the ultimate middle-class society. It turns out that public anger doesn't dissipate as the average house size (and waistband) expands; it simply fastens onto new targets. Perhaps, as some analysts argue, the anger of an affluent post-industrial society is inevitably rooted more in cultural identity than in economic discontentbut then again, never underestimate the rage of an American who senses a threat to material livelihood.