I mean, there was anger at politicians, but it was mostly "all politicians are corrupt". I certainly don't remember people saying "I am angry" all the time. I wonder if this was a coastal thing (e.g., the 'Occupy' movement seemed angry in a way that I couldn't relate to having lived my whole life in the midwest) and social media amplified it and spread it across the country?
I do recall online discourse being a lot angrier and less civil (not merely "more critical", but a lot more personal attacks, hateful generalizations, caricatures, etc). It was no longer "politicians are bad", nor even "the other side's politicians are bad", but increasingly "Americans on the other side are the enemy". And of course, conservatives were slow to adopt social media, so (as I recall) this was mostly liberals and progressives punching at conservatives who were still trying to be more buttoned up and play by the old rules, but as they increasingly came online and encountered the new incivility directed towards them (and the incivilizing force of social media itself acting upon them), I think it caused a lot of latent anger to accumulate until they finally embraced incivility in the form of Donald Trump (to be clear, this is a very abridged version of a very complex topic).
> I just wonder how we can get out of this. My main observations are only from the US but the thinking that there are “others” who can’t be understood or talked to but need to eliminated is quite deeply ingrained in a lot of people.
My hope is that the next generation will see the pointless harm caused by our hate/rage addiction and reject it, and maybe even regard it like an addictive substance (perhaps encouraging people to avoid social media, set up resources for addicted people, regulate social media companies, etc).