In this Year of Our Lord 2015 it appears that if you wish to be in step with the times, you have to be ticked off at something or somebody. If you frequent social media, it’s obvious that rage is all the rage today.

I have a difficult time enlisting in other people’s anger armies; so I usually just ignore the memes with aggressive comments or foul language. However, either I have become more observant or the campaigns are tipping further and further into the stupid bog.

For instance, there was one post being shared on Facebook last week that was attempting to rouse some rabble because, according to whoever wrote it, Social Security checks were going to be referred to as Federal Benefit Payments. I’m not sure what the poster wanted me to do about it—man the barricades, picket the local Social Security office, burn my Social Security check? (I can guarantee that the last on the previous list is not going to happen.)

However, I don’t have to leap to any of the above. First, because I really don’t care what they call the money they deposit for me each month. As my brother Pat said, “They can call it dog food for all I care.”

The other reason is that the poster of the meme either didn’t know the facts or didn’t care about the facts. The facts are that Federal Benefit Payments are a broad class of payments (including Social Security), and have been called that since the 1930s when the legislation was passed.

Another crises averted.

Other rabble rousers choose much more sensitive subjects. There was a meme showing somebody desecrating an American flag. My generation was raised to honor the flag, to die for it if necessary. We show our flag on appropriate occasions, and I still go to great lengths not to let it touch the ground. I object to people not treating our flag with respect. So I should enlist in this particular anger army? Nope. The meme isn’t posted to promote the proper respect for the flag; its message is that there are people out there we’re supposed to be angry at, although the poster doesn’t suggest what we’re supposed to do with that anger.

The list could, of course, go on. Check out your social media page on any given day, and you’ll probably find a dozen or more of these posts, some more idiotic than others, but none particularly useful, all asking you to get mad at something or somebody, as if anger without action were a solution to those  things. If that were as far as it goes, I’d just go back to being a noncombatant in the rage wars. But it doesn’t seem to stop in cyber world.

Last week, on one thirty-minute news show, there were two road rage stories. In one story a woman was shot in the back, but managed to get her Corvette off the expressway without killing anybody else. She’s recovering in the hospital. The shooter has not yet been arrested. In the other, more tragic story, a four-year-old girl was killed in a road rage shooting.

I believe that what we see on the Internet and what is happening in the real world are connected. There are people whose primary purpose is to generate anger and unrest over all sorts of things, some of them even true. Most of us are armchair anger mongers, and all that this does is contribute to the growth and well-being of our ulcers. However, there are a few who take it to one of the next levels, the most extreme being using one of our freedoms to deny someone else of their freedom or their life.

Since I have a real distaste for people who pose problems without posing solutions, I would suggest the following when you see one of these “look what they’ve done to you now” postings:

1.   If it’s not important, not true, or doesn’t point to a legal remedy, ignore it. That’ll take care of about ninety per cent of what you see.
   
2.   If it’s important, true, and appears to be something you can do something about without having to serve time if you’re caught, take action.
   
3.   If your system really needs something to rage at, here are some suggestions:
   

a.  The fact that so many in the United States, black and white, are raised in an environment of hopelessness.

b.  The fact that so many look at these people, tuck their smugness around them, and self-righteously say, “it’s all their fault. If they’d just made the right decisions they wouldn’t be there.”

c.  The people who are enriching themselves at all levels of government at the expense of the citizens.

d.  The fact that we still talk about American exceptionalism as we fall further behind other countries in health care, in the care of our families and seniors, in education, and in upward mobility.

e.  The fact that our government has become so broken and divided that “compromise” is considered a dirty word.

And that list, too, could go on. However, the important point is that if we’re going to rage against something, we should at least look for a solution. Enough of this henny-penny stuff.