America’s Nervous Breakdown
Road rage, flight meltdowns, and a general sense of anger is now part of everyday life in post Trump, Anti-vaxx America.
by Bob Cesca
WASHINGTON, DC -- For the past several months, you might’ve noticed how people are driving like maniacs on America’s highways. This isn’t necessarily breaking news that our roads are festooned with crappy drivers, but what’s definitely breaking news is that more drivers than usual are speeding around like they’re auditioning for the next Fast & Furious movie. I’m talking about zigzagging through high speed congestion, aggressive tailgating, no sparing the horn -- road rage beyond the norm.
I noticed this once I was vaccinated, after 14 months of isolation, but I thought I was imagining it. I thought I was unaccustomed to being in highway traffic and maybe the reality of it caught me off guard. But then I started to ask around and sure enough, I spoke with friends and family about what I’ve observed and every last one of them noticed it, too. The roads are far more dangerous now than they were before the pandemic.
Across the country, road rage altercations already were a problem before the COVID-19 pandemic struck. But in some areas, police say they’ve seen incidents spike during the past year and a half, as people have become more stressed and tensions have flared more easily.
“Whether people realize it or not, they’ve been under greater stress during the last year and a half,” [Psychology professor Ryan] Martin said. “People are in a more anxious state than they used to be. I think that’s increasing people’s likelihood of snapping.”
When it comes to driving 100 mph or more, 2,800 people have been cited so far this year, compared to 3,308 for all of 2018. Sgt. Roden said the [Utah Highway Patrol] has seen a 46% increase in fatal crashes so far this year compared to 2020.
The rage isn’t reserved strictly to our highways. Anyone who’s spent any time on social media knows about the conga-line of airline passenger freakouts recently. Once again, I wondered whether it was anecdotal or an actual trend -- often with cameraphones and social media, what can seem like a trend is often just a series of well-shared isolated incidents. Not the case here, either. Airline rage is real.
As of Aug. 8, the FAA has fielded complaints of 3,810 incidents involving unruly passengers and 2,786 incidents related to masks this year alone. It has launched 655 investigations and initiated 112 enforcement cases. Those are only the incidents reported to the FAA. Flight crew members may have decided not to report others.
Between 1995 and 2020, the year with the highest number of investigations launched over unruly passengers was 2004 with 310 cases. But in 2021 -- hang onto your butts -- there have been 682 cases, and there’s four more months to go.
America is caught in the throes of a national nervous breakdown, and more than a few of us are suffering from post-traumatic stress brought on by the existential terror of the pandemic and the apparent unwinding of our democratic republic. The consequences of our emotional condition are being illustrated on the highways and at 30,000 feet. (cont below.)
More for Banter Members:
Is Biden To Blame For The Current Catastrophe In Afghanistan? - Ben Cohen asks how much responsibility Biden should take for the disaster unfolding there
Personally, now more than ever, my sense of claustrophobia, cynicism, and rage are palpable. The abandonment of good faith political arguments by half the country as upwards of 70 million of us inexplicably follow behind a known con-man -- a pied piper of fascist idiocracy -- is perpetually confounding to me. Likewise, the feeling of being held hostage by shirkers who refuse to act responsibly in the face of a virus -- a virus that can not and will not acquiesce to the “strength and resolve” of the American people, no matter how many times Lee Greenwood plays on endless loop.
And while I take out my frustrations by trolling Don Junior on Twitter or by lifting weights and bike riding with intense fury, too many of us without constructive release valves for our rage are acting out in public and further endangering the lives of others, passing on the madness as virally as COVID.
Ousting Trump went a long way toward allowing cooler heads to prevail, but we’re nowhere close to untangling ourselves from the pricker bushes of the past five or six years. COVID is far from gone, and Trump might run again.
So, for heaven’s sake, keep your seat belts buckled.
Read an excerpt from the latest for Banter Members:
Dancing In A Sea Of MAGAs
Justin Rosario went to a concert filled with MAGA supporters. He lived to tell the tale.
by Justin Rosario
Last Wednesday, I went to a concert for the first time in decades. My wife and I do not share musical tastes in the slightest, so we’ve never felt the need to go to a concert together. But now, our close bond with neighbor Claudia and her 13 year old daughter Lila means I have someone to share my passion for heavy metal with.
Claudia will see almost any kind of music live because she craves the experience almost more than the music and has not had much opportunity since her divorce to go to a concert. Worse, she has had zero chance to see anything at all since Covid. When she stumbled onto $20 tickets for a ‘Staind’ and ‘Korn’ nostalgia show, she went for it, getting tickets for the three of us.
You may be wondering why her teenage daughter would want to go to a Nu Metal concert. Well, that would be, in part, because of my dreadful influence. Lila watches a lot of anime which, you might be surprised to learn, uses a lot of heavy metal. Because of this, Lila was already starting to show some interest in heavier music than her mother normally listens to. Being the devoted surrogate father that I am, I introduced her to the good stuff: Korn, Tool, Ministry, Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, etc. She took it from there and dived headfirst into screaming lyrics, tooth-shaking bass, and guitar riffs to die for.
For my part, Claudia asked me to go because the venue was an hour away and left to her own devices, she might not go. That worked out great for me since I had never seen Korn live before and going with my surrogate daughter to her first metal concert sounded like the best idea ever!
It promised to be quite an evening. And it was, not all of it for good reasons.
In A Sea Of Drunk MAGAs
I have never been to a nostalgia concert before so I really had no expectations. I also have not been to a concert since the 90s so I was not really thinking about what kind of crowd we would find when we got there. That being said, I wasn’t too surprised to discover that a good number of the men in attendance had significantly more grey hair than I did. I was, however, a little more taken aback by how very, very white the crowd was.
I know that sounds silly, because of course the middle-aged crowd for a couple of twenty-plus-year-old metal bands is going to skew sharply towards the pale end of the spectrum. In my defense, I spend very little time among large crowds of white people so whenever that happens, it’s kind of jarring. It certainly was for Lila. She was a bit intimidated to be surrounded by so many people like me: tall, old, overweight, white, and loud. I wasn’t intimidated so much as unsettled which is probably why Lila was the first to notice what kind of white crowd it was.
After about five minutes, Lila commented that we were surrounded by racists. I did not understand what she was talking about until I actually started to look at the people around us….
An outstanding observation of reality in post-Trump 'murica. Funny, here in reality (i.e., not on social media), I see no noticeable vitriol from the MAGA Right and the Liberal Left against the vast number of black and Latino people, many young, who are decidedly against vaccines under the delusion that it will impact their fertility. How ironic that "BLM" and "it isn't fair that COVID is hitting people of color the most" yet no pushback on this. MAGAs may be silently cheering them on: you know, the enemy of my enemy....Identity politics is totally out of control, and we have the "both sides" of the extreme to thank. Of course, Liberals love to play their anachronistic "Tuskegee experiment" excuse card when challenged.