Anger Means

It's another SF Chronicle big-think story about "angry" voters. Yes, it would be nicer if people would quietly acquiesce to everything that the local liberal elite declares to be the "proper" policy, but that's really not how things work. You would think journalists working in the Bay Area, where local progressives have turned political protest into a forum for primal scream therapy, would at least have show some perspective before applying the catch-all emotion of "anger" to middle-class tea partiers: Angry Voters Look to Government; Do Something!

The 2009 political year began on a high note of "change" and "hope" and ended in a thud of stalemate, despair and public fury over the economy, health care reform and the war in Afghanistan.

No wonder it may go down as the year of the angry voter.

Americans will remember 2009 as much for the grassroots protests - at "Tea Party" rallies and town hall meetings crashed by conservatives to demonstrations by public-option-favoring anti-war progressives - as the Beltway grudge matches that characterized President Obama's first year in office.

In California, residents endured months of bitter, partisan battles in Sacramento over the state's multibillion-dollar budget deficit and the painful cuts, furloughs and program closures that came with it.

But even as they put the year in the rearview mirror, Americans shared common ground across the political divide, with deepening worries about their jobs, their disintegrating savings accounts and their changing health care.

The common message for their state and local elected officials: Do something.

Grrrrrrrrr! Bite! Bite! Grrrr!

Whenever conservatives are energized, it is a "year of the angry voter." We are never allowed to be sincere in our beliefs. No, we are simply beside ourselves with rage. The idea that voters are "angry" might be comforting to liberal elites who have to confront voters who don't like the idea of A taking money from B to give to C. The thinking seems to be: if they're angry, they are that much easier to ignore.

Also, I think the message of the tea partiers to the government is not "Do Something!" Quite the opposite. Conservatives, whether at tea parties or elsewhere, are asking that the government stop doing things: no more bailouts, no more tax increases, no more debt, etc.

Liberals love the idea of an "angry" easily caricatured right, as if we were lashing out at the progressives delivering a Brave New World on a silver platter, not knowing what we are doing or why, endlessly manipulated by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and the insurance companies. Hah!

We know what our anger means.