Angry city has a very troubled heart

Christopher Bantick concludes his description about an Angry city has a very troubled heart with the observation that:

What kind of society is it that produces that kind of anger, visited on people going about their business?

What kind of society is it where anger management courses are burgeoning in suburban recreation halls?

Road rage, spouse rage, train rage, age rage against the elderly, trolley rage in supermarkets and bread rage in a bakery, says something about the level of intolerance prompting anger.

The philosophy is simple: we matter, others don't. It's mindless selfishness.

There is a worrying angry ugliness in Melbourne's troubled heart.

No longer are mean, shadowy streets just in the city. They run between manicured suburban nature strips.

Bullies leave school, then drive cars, travel in packs on trains, hang out in hotel car parks and visit bakeries.

Emphasis Mine

In another angry city, we see two people casually walking away from someone who was Punched and robbed for his mobile telephone.

Meanwhile, James Howard Kunstler is ever cheerful for his Forecast for 2008:

In any case, whoever ends up in the oval office will preside over one king-hell of a clusterfuck. In the immortal words of TV's erstwhile "Mr. T," I pity da fool who gets elected into this mess. There will be a whole continent full of bankrupt, re-poed, and idle former WalMart shoppers, many of them with half of their skin tattooed and many of that bunch all revved up to "roll heavy and gun up" against the folks who screwed them.

I would suggest that practising non-violence is going to have to be a survival tactic.

I have been on buses where youths have tried to knife each other. I have been on trains where people almost came to blows.

The immediate cause is some fatuous remark which the "innocent" victim was too proud to apologise for. People would rather die than admit that they were wrong.

Some people think they can treat others as dirt and expect to escape unharmed.

I sense the anger and frustration every time I take public transport. I well understand why the train station keeps getting burnt down.