Mad As Hell

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One of the most successful films of 1976 was “Network.” The movie featured Howard Beale, a network anchor with declining ratings. In a rage about his impending cancellation, he screams out a window, “I’m mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.” His anger becomes the feature of a new show and his angry man persona garners a large audience by using his rant as his slogan. He finds that his audience is also “mad as hell,” although not really about any common grievance. Beale becomes the face of their anger.

As an amateur political scientist, I have been puzzling over the continued support for Donald Trump. It defies conventional wisdom. At any other time, his personal failings, bombastic behavior, and legal travails would have long ago eliminated him as a candidate. But now is just not any other time.

I think Trump is a modern Howard Beale, but a presidential candidate instead of a news anchor. For quite a while, perhaps more than two decades, a growing segment of the US population has been undergoing a slow boil. Economics, taxes, government regulations, cultural breakdowns, seemingly endless war, and on and on have hit sore nerves and spiked anger. Who used to be called members of the Silent Majority are no longer silent and they are angry about the state of affairs in the nation. As with the followers of Howard Beale, they may be “mad as hell” about a wide variety of things but their anger coalesces around Trump. Trump says things about the establishment that they want to be said and attacks people and institutions they want to see attacked.

There were approximately 75 million citizens who voted for Trump in 2020 and polls suggest he may have similar support now. For how many of them Trump embodies their anger, who knows. I suspect a number that would surprise many. If only 50%, that means we have roughly 40 million Americans who are fed up with the status in the United States and angry enough to support a candidate for President that the intelligentsia cannot understand and dismisses them merely as deplorables. That is a problem.

Howard Beale’s audience grows bored with him and eventually moves on. Trump’s opponents believe the same thing will happen when Trump is defeated. By election day in 2024, however, Trump’s supporters will have been behind him for eight years. Unlike Howard Beale’s audience, they have not moved on even though they have a host of reasons to do so. The pundits believe Trump is the source of their anger rather than merely its face; that he is nothing more than a boil that, once lanced, will lose its force. But what if he is nothing more than the rod for the populist lightning? What if even if he is defeated, he leaves the angry energy behind? What if once Trump leaves the stage 40 million Americans or more remain “mad as hell” and determined to show they will not take “it” anymore? And what if they conclude they have given the ballot box a try and it no longer works fairly, and must try something else?

I have no idea what the answers are to the questions I pose. I know, however, that the anger is real. How broad and deep? I have no measure, but I think it is real enough that it should not be casually dismissed. Something is happening in this country and whatever it is, it strikes me as dangerous. If it was just the Trump supporters that would be bad enough. But I have a sense that many across the line from the Trump supporters are just as mad. How easily our streets filled with angry Hamas supporters may just be another coal mine canary.

The United States has been at such a crossroads many times before. Often, we have found a way to reconcile the competing interests and become a better society. But sometimes those who have been “mad as hell” have resorted to violence, which occasionally has been widespread. I am not a prophet and cannot foresee our future. I know only this: each crossroads presents the choice of a path. Nothing is inevitable until we make the wrong choice, and only history is the judge. But I fear our time at the crossroads is coming.

© 2023, Thomas Trezise