by Arianna Huffington

The tea party is angry! Really, really angry. Or so we are told again and again by the media. According to the conventional wisdom, it's the story of this election, and likely the next one: those opposed to Obama are angry and have coalesced around the tea party. But like much conventional wisdom, it's wrong.

There's no doubt the tea partiers are angry. But what's missing from this narrative is the fact that everybody is angry.

As I discovered when I spoke at the Teamsters Women's Conference on Saturday, even people who love the president, and who would not dream of voting for anyone other than a Democrat, are angry.

And it's not hard to understand why. How can you look at what's happening in America and not become angry? Every time I look at the news, I get freshly angry. Poverty on the rise, and no end in sight for high unemployment and foreclosures.

As the president's chief economic adviser Austan Goolsbee said last week, those numbers aren't going to change any time soon.

So no wonder it's not just tea partiers who are angry. And if we keep associating anger exclusively with the tea party, our public debate becomes a false choice between the status quo and an agenda that would, quite simply, destroy America.

As Jane Mayer showed in her must-read New Yorker profile on the billionaire tea party-backing Koch brothers, those behind the tea party have been pushing the same ideas for a long time now, but have cynically appropriated the legitimate anger in the country and steered it to serve their own ends. Are you angry? Well then, you're obviously on board for their program. Or so they would have you believe.

But, in fact, there is more than one way to channel anger. Yes, you can demonize and divide and scapegoat. You can play on people's economic fears by whipping up a deeply un-American campaign of hate against a religious minority. You can try to sever the pathways of empathy by implying, as Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle does, that those out of work are just lazy bums who would rather sit around and collect unemployment checks than look for work.

The northernmost tea party favorite, Alaska U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller, goes a step further and claims that unemployment benefits are actually unconstitutional.

So, sure, going all lizard-brain and playing on people's fear and anger and economic anxiety to divide them from one another is one way to go. But there's no reason that this has to be the only logical outgrowth of anger. There is, in fact, another path to take. Anger can be harnessed and redirected -- the energy behind it used to connect, to reach out, to take action, to make life better both for your family and for others who need help.

These days, we mostly talk about our shortages -- a shortage of jobs, a shortage of revenues (hence our growing deficit and mounting debt). But we also have a surplus of energy, skills and -- for those unemployed or underemployed -- a surplus of time.

What most took me by surprise during the researching of my book -- and now as I'm traveling around the country -- is the extraordinary creativity being brought to bear in communities all around the country on the problems facing America.

For instance, there is Seth Reams of Portland, Ore., whom I write about in "Third World America." After losing his job as a concierge in December 2008, he and his girlfriend, Michelle King, started an organization called We've Got Time to Help. It's an online meetinghouse that matches people who have time on their hands (many of whom, like Reams, have been laid-off) with local needs in the community. So far, they've helped out by building community gardens, repairing cars for those who can't afford a mechanic, building a wheelchair ramp and helping people who move from their homes.

Then there is lawyer Cheryl Jacobs, who, along with her job as a torts lawyer at a big firm, had been doing pro bono work as part of the highly successful Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Program in Philadelphia that helps homeowners facing foreclosure through the legal process. After being laid off, Jacobs took on even more foreclosure cases, eventually opening her own practice dedicated to helping people keep their homes.

When I was in Detroit recently, I met Eric Jirgens, an interior designer with many fewer jobs than he used to have in his recession-ravaged city. So he's using his underutilized skills to transform a women's shelter into a beautiful and more welcoming space for the women who have to temporarily call it home. He's working with suppliers to get donations and bringing in other designers. The idea isn't to just spruce things up with a few donated rugs and chairs, but to really create a sense of warmth and safety and comfort.

So, as we are at this crossroads in our nation's history, Seth, Michelle, Cheryl, and Eric -- and tens of thousands of others around the country -- are demonstrating another way to go.

Our anger will either lead us to tap into our baser instincts or into the better angels of our nature. And nothing less than the future of our country rides on the decision.

 

Available at Amazon.com:

Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future

The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama

The Feminine Mystique

The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy

The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics

Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks

The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House

 

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Dear Angry American: Joining Tea party is NOT Your Only Option | Politics

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