When I was a kid, I had a bad temper. I suppose in today’s psychobabble, they would say I had an “anger-management issue” and perhaps they would give me drugs, a handicapped parking pass, and special privileges. But back in the day, I was just a kid with a temper.
One summer day when I was about 11, when my parents weren’t home, my brother and sister locked me out of the house for reasons I don’t remember (but they were probably good ones).
A back door to the house was sliding glass. This was before modern safety glass or double-pane windows. It was a simple un-tempered sliding glass door.
In a fit of anger, I kicked it. Not just with my toe, but with a big round-house kick. It felt good to see it tremble and shake, so I did it again, harder.
It broke. Sheets of jagged glass fell straight across my extended leg. I was wearing shorts.
I was lucky the glass didn’t cut my leg off. As it was, a big razor-sharp glass sheet penetrated well over an inch into my calf through a four-inch incision. In the gaping wound, I could see the fat layer and, beneath it, the red muscle tissue. I screamed in horror and pain.
My sister grabbed a towel, and we threw it around my leg. She ran across the street to ask a neighbor for help. I limped to his car and he casually chatted as he drove me to the ER. When I emerged from surgery an hour later, the neighbor was white, for he’d been told in the meantime about the severity of my injury.
Fortunately, the glass missed the artery, though there was plenty of blood. It did cut a nerve to my foot and left me without feeling on one side of my foot for a few months. To this day, that side of my foot has a funky sensation.
That evening, my father came home from work as usual.
Father: “I hear your temper got the best of you today.”
Me: “Yeah.”
That was it, and we never spoke of it again. I still lose my cool occasionally – most men do – but that’s the last time I can remember that my anger drove me into doing something dangerously stupid.
Anger is a powerful force. Channeled strategically by high-testosterone men storming the beaches of Normandy, it can save the world. Used less-strategically, it can destroy it – and them.
There’s a place for anger in politics. Like a lot of people today, I’m angry. Like a lot of people today, I want to kick the glass doors of our government, media, universities, and big businesses for their censorship, their racial discrimination, their wokeness, their antisemitism, and their incompetence.
Like a lot of people today, I like a candidate who feels similar anger. That’s why I voted for Donald Trump in 2016, again in 2020, and will again in 2024. He’s angry about the right things for the right reasons.
But anger has its limits. The boys storming Normandy had anger, and they sure as hell kicked in the glass door of Hitler’s house, but they weren’t just kicking a glass door.
Those boys also had a careful plan that was devised over months of thought, analysis and discussion by brilliant professionals like General Dwight D. Eisenhower. There were plans, counterplans, contingency plans, a retreat plan, and even a failure plan. Eisenhower himself drafted a mea culpa taking complete responsibility for the effort in case it failed.
Donald Trump has done a ton of good for America, but his anger is reaching the limits of its effectiveness. On Tuesday, he seemed to be kicking glass doors that weren’t even locked.
That appeals to a lot of people, including me in some circumstances. But it turns off women, who are often frightened by a man’s anger. And it turns off unengaged independent and moderate voters. You may despise such people, but they’re the ones who decide elections.
I’ll vote for Trump again, as I’ve already said. But I don’t expect him to win, and I don’t expect any Eisenhower-type mea culpa from him when he loses. Anger has its limits.
the Aspen beat 
Nicely done, Glenn. I too have always had an anger problem. And it never did me any good in the ad agency world where diplomacy was much needed. Today, I study Stoicism and have learned to control it…mostly. It seems that Trump, unlike most of us, never learns anything.
Total misfocus…
People won’t be voting “for Trump” —
voters will be voting against inflation, against invasion from the border, against military weakness, against foreign wars and humiliation, against crime on and Democrat sh*t and dope needles on the streets — and against every other offense of the Democrat Party perpetrated against the American people for the past 3-1/2 years.
Elections — in America, at least, with its winner-take-all form of government — are essentially binary…
Was the Kamal angry at the debate? You bet she was — screaming angry.
But, anger — by either candidate is not somehow the issue. The issue is — assuming arguendo that Kamala does have a “Plan” — why this alleged Plan has not been carried-out for the past 3-1/2 Democrat years?
Columns telling the “average citizen” what they just saw — are always interesting. And, this Column is one of the best.
But, however, and as the above personal anecdote may illustrate, the perspective of any and all “on-site reports” is that of the observer qua de facto journalist.
Today is my 81st birthday. Like anyone else, I am a product of my life-experiences. And advanced age is one of them.
We have a lot of elderly in America — and, this group is not insidgmifiant in its “voting-back” power.
But, we really don’t have an “old-people” columnist — ie..e, one who provide the “voice” of age.
As a 50+ year lawyer who continues to practice in trials and appeals, I would be willing to write columns that report on what this “old-guy crowd” sees and thinks. But, the Standard Press has adamantly refused to tap into this talent pool — assuming arguendo the we all don’t have Alzheimer’s, like one prominent politician the we know.
BMW Law
keep in mind why the man is angry. the left is constantly trying to get him killed (and almost succeeded), thrown in prison for life, and to bankrupt him. how would you be reacting? Asking for a friend.
I think he has every reason to be angry, Dorothy. But the question is whether his expressions of that anger are helping or hurting his election prospects. They appear to be hurting.
I get it. And no doubt he was overconfident. Always enjoy your articles.
EXACTLY…….at some point righteous anger is the answer.
Do wish Trump had been more focused with his anger.
I am a retired lawyer living in New Zealand who follows American politics closely, because what happens in America affects the rest of the free World
I have been reading your columns for several years and have enjoyed them. One this column, however, I beg to disagree. Donald Trump has every right to be angry. The debate was like going into the lion’s den. What that man has endured would make a saint angry. He has every right to be very very angry and I cannot for the life of me understand how he has managed to carry on fighting when pitted against constant hostility.
You should all, in America, thank him, and pray that he wins.
I’m not saying he has no right to be angry. Rather, I’m saying that showing it is not helping him.
I am a woman and his anger does not intimidate me in the slightest and I suspect that millions of women in the USA feel like I do. I am the child of holocaust survivors and am intimately acquainted with evil. What you in US are currently fighting are the forces of evil, with one man, just one man, prepared to stand up and fight for all that was once good in your country. I say, fight on Mr Trump and be as angry as you can be.The future of your country is at stake.
For years I wished Trump would not say certain things. Alas he was almost killed. As far as I am concerned he can say and do whatever he feels like. And when the fan gets hit with crap, I want him leading my country.
Glenn. I refer you to an article published today on American Thinker, entitled “Trumps Debate Anger reflects America’s Anger”, penned by Hank Vanderbeek. Interesting.
Well, maybe Trump “won” the debate, as that commenter contends.
But I’m not aware of a single person on Planet Earth who thinks so, who was not already planning to vote for him.
I would only politely counter that DJT also has a lot to be angry about, especially on the personal level. The Deep State and Hillary campaign character assassins went after him with the absolutely false Russia collusion hoax … the MSM just piled on. Then there was the DOJ Robert Mueller investigation that just dragged his name through the mud needlessly during the early years of his presidency.
Hollywood put out all sort of DJT death fantasies during the his first term … remember that weird and not so funny comic who held up an imitated version of DJT’s severed head? There were also fantasy assassination plays and skits, and more.
Then there was Impeachment #1 based off of that NSA snitch Vindman over what was a national security policy dispute. Funny … I always thought that the Commander-In-Chief determines what the national security policy is, and petty bureaucratic officers in the NSA are left to implement that policy.
Then there are the myriad of instances in which the MSM, BigTech, the Deep State, the Democrat Party, and other Leftist pressure groups all colluded together to lie about and slander POTUS 45.
Much of these same tactics were repeated in 2020 to deny DJT a fair shot at getting re-elected … like those 51 “spooks” who all assured America that Hunter Biden’s laptop from hell was just another Russia disinformation op.
Than there was Impeachment #2 … which never made any sense. How does the U.S. Senate constitutionally conduct an impeachment trial (for the removal of a U.S. President) for someone who is no longer in office? He was a private citizen after January 20, 2021!
Then there has been all of the lawfare waged against DJT in the past few years … a bastardization and total perversion of our justice system. Any other politician would have folded like a wet paper bag a long time before this.
Now … according to this weekend’s late news, another assassination attempt was tried against DJT. This one at his hometown in Florida and just two months after the first attempt that left him grazed on the ear.
So … when you put all of this together in total, I am surprised that DJT isn’t more pissed off than he already is, and I do not blame him for occasionally flashing his anger in public.
I know that I am getting pissed off … and yet another credible second assassination attempt. That’s two this summer, and summer isn’t officially over for a few more days yet!
I get it … DJT has a temper and is prone to be angry. This is a righteous reflection of a large portion of the American electorate.
In the past, the conservative movement has offered up milquetoast non-combative conforming candidates like McCain and Romney. They too were smeared by the Left as racists, hate-mongers, chauvinists, greedy vulture capitalists, etc. and they went down in defeat with nothing more than a whimper.
Meanwhile the Secret Service has morphed into a a cadre of stumbling and bumbling Inspector Clouseaus or the comical Keystone Cops. How long before we find out that this new close call potential assassin was also known to the FBI, much like so many of these mass shooters have been?
At least the Feds have locked up those dangerous Christians praying outside of abortion mills, and have convicted and sentenced grandmothers who briefly stepped inside the U.S. Capitol on January 6 (after being welcomed in by Capitol police.) This is just piling insults onto the injuries created by the dysfunctional Biden Administration.
Frankly … I am just surprised that DJT isn’t rabidly foaming from the mouth angry whenever he goes out in public to campaign, rally, interview or debate. I know I would be … that’s probably why I have no desire to run for office.
G’day …
I don’t doubt that Trump has lots to be angry about, and I certainly would be if I were in his position.
My doubt is whether expressing that anger is helping him with the independent and moderate voters who are necessary to win an election.
The republicans in D.C. hate Trump and want him dead. Cellar dweller McConnell could not be woken for comment.