It is easy to look at current events in the United States and feel an impending sense of dread, where singular actions feel useless against a larger, flawed system. How much can one person really do? Political rage, for the sake of this argument, is this feeling of extreme political discontent, and it can manifest itself in many ways. It is crucial that instead of letting it lead us into inactive lives of cynicism, we channel it as the fuel toward meaningful action and change.
In Generation Z especially, political rage is commonly expressed through social media posts. These posts stem from the average performative story repost, about any given issue that has gained traction for the week, to in-depth radicalizing echo chambers. A study from the University of Michigan found that people subjected to political attacks via social media experienced increased anger toward the United States governmental system, increasing their political cynicism. Notably, just with the sheer amount of information people post about, it is easy to get lost in the noise and lose focus on the ways we can make actual impacts. In this instance, the anger experienced is usually a justified emotion, but it is the inaction after this emotion that becomes the problem.
In “Rage as a Political Emotion,” Mustafa Dikeç describes political rage as representing “a politics that makes space to manifest self-determination and demand equality.” In this sense, political rage is not some meaningless emotion, but rather a legitimate response to the systematic failures of our country that will result in change if channeled properly. Dikeç specifically calls the civil unrest protests that urban communities engaged in after the killing of George Floyd at the hands of the police as an example of political rage being harnessed by a community to demand equality.
Channelling political rage in a meaningful way is key for a functioning democracy. Being nihilistic and on a moral high horse about the state of our country will only take us so far. As individuals, we should lean into and embrace individual actions. These actions can be as simple as how we treat others in our daily interpersonal relationships. How can we expect the country or world to change if we cannot even change ourselves first? Individual actions also look like volunteering time or money to organizations that work to solve the issues one might care about, participating in protests or the most basic civil duty of voting.
There is much to be angry about within this country, and that anger being expressed is a logical path. But while language is powerful, words can only do so much. Some may believe that rejecting and disengaging with the whole system demonstrates superior morality, but in reality, it shows their lazy inability to reasonably and realistically interact with a system to try to change it for the better.
