“You ain’t the only one who feels like this world left you far behind. I don’t know why you gotta be angry all the time.” Tim McGraw song, released 2001.
I recently heard this song from years back and it struck me how much has changed since it was released. In the early 2000s, when country music mega-star Tim McGraw was singing this song, it didn’t seem relevant to much of anything other than a couple in that heart-wrenching, hostile time before a break-up. When I heard it a few weeks ago though, it seemed relevant to broader issues for us as a country.
These days we Americans seem awfully angry a lot of the time. Even in the friendliest of locations, like my small town backyard, folks appear more stressed and on edge than usual. Maybe it’s because we’re in the middle of political season or, sadly, for reasons deeper and more pervasive.
According to an article in The Economist, “Mr. Trump’s most loyal supporters – white men without college degrees – have much to be cross about. They have lost economic and social power, thanks partly to global competition and automation but also to feminism and civil rights.”
Republicans are also angry with other Republicans. The LA Times explained intra-Republican party animosity this way, “The controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline … may soon be dead, tough antiabortion legislation has languished in the Senate, and a fiercely disputed nuclear deal with Iran seems virtually certain to take effect, despite near-unanimous opposition from Republicans in Congress … People feel betrayed.”
Republicans aren’t the only ones that are angry either. According to an article in RealClearPolitics, millennials (many of whom are seriously liberal) are irked because “We (millennials) know that our government would be better off spending more of our tax dollars on jobs and education, and not just on Social Security and defense. We overwhelmingly recognize that the war on drugs has been an embarrassing waste of money and lives, and that anyone should be able to marry whomever they love.”
“You ain’t the only one who feels like this world left you far behind …”
Evidently, feeling left behind is a pretty universal experience these days. And it’s an experience that’s making an awful lot of folks really angry.
Before we adults in the room let this get any uglier, it might be a good idea for us all to recognize that lots of people are feeling the same things … oftentimes for very different reasons. Maybe now would be a good time for us to soften up a little bit because angry gets counterproductive fast. Let’s rein it in. It’s time for a new song.
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