When I was very young, the words angry and mad were two words for the same thing. I grew older to learn there was a commonly held distinction between the two. Mad was a state of unsound mind. Anger was a temporary affliction to a sound mind. Now I am older still and know the affliction can become the madness if relief is not periodically provided. A natural progression. Anger begets madness and madness resolves when anger is overcome. My child was correct. It is madness to be angry but it is not necessary to be angry and mad, which are the folks we are rightly most concerned about.

We all know the ones I describe. They fill prisons and asylums all over the world. There will never be cages, locks and chains enough to restrain their ever growing numbers. There will never be political will to stop the madness.

We can put left over anger in uniform and send it off to kill and die. We can have it overflowing into our streets. We can promote violent sports and violent attacks upon the earth and its people. Because we do all this and much more, to include robberies and frauds, deceptions never ending; we are surely all quite mad in our collective. What we have is mad democracy. If we could put the madness in a minority, we rational people would have dominion.

An angry nation needs angry citizens to approve the madness. It creates an ample supply of volunteers. Every day, in every way, we institutionalize madness. We elect it and we offer up our first fruits to it. We nurture it, expose it and applaud it. Isn’t that just what we all do? Are we not quite mad?

As a boy, I was alternatively happy - go - lucky and angry. As a young man, looking back, I discovered that most young American males were angry much of the time. Add still more years of experience and I saw young women were just as angry as the males but they did not act out. They internalized it all. Do most marriages fail because of money or is it all about repressed anger? America was an angry nation and the ugly American was an angry American. We come to the present time and it seems to me this is no mere American phenomenon. It is global, universal and most likely, justified.

It was only about ten years ago I obtained some understanding of this anger thing. We learn early to fear being victimized by others. Victimizers, to include our social role models, sense and exploit this fear, oddly enough by victimizing us. This tells us we were correct to fear and the victimization turns fear to resentment and the identification of victimizing enemies of every stripe and talent. They are everywhere. We are just one small step from anger and a few more victimizations help us create a permanent state. There need be no violence in our victimization. Neglect, low expectations, rejection and disillusion with our early role models is all that is necessary, in any combination. Off course, violence makes an excellent catalyst to speed the process. One day, we wonder what happened to that happy child.

Now we take an angry adult and tell her she needs this, that and the other to be happy, so she strives to obtain these things, only to find she has spent a lot of time, energy and money to be as miserable as ever and maybe twice as angry. What kind of wife and mother will she be? What kind of man will she marry?

Have you observed your happy-go-lucky President, his happy-go-lucky Cabinet, our happy-go-lucky Congress. Exactly! They are as fearful and angry as any of us and more so. This was the fuel behind their ambition and success. No one is immune to victimization, anywhere. That is, until we realize it is a choice. In our youth it was the choice of others. In adulthood, it is our own. We can make choices that disallow our victimization. We can choose not to victimize others. The more of us who make these choices, the fewer victims and victimizers we must deal with every day.

Our super fearful leaders can’t lead for the paralysis of fear. They need to distinguish between the terrorist and the soldier fighting by the rules, yet the end result is the same. Fear and paralysis. They, like the people we lock away, take on both roles. Victimizing victims. Do unto others before they do unto you. The iron rule of preemptive attack.

If you are tired of living in fear, just to belong, make a new choice. If you are tired of victimizing others, make a new choice. When enough of us make this new choice, our families, communities and nations will be new as we. Only we can stop the madness. Only we can say enough!

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