Peter Wood

Episode 164: “Wrath: America Enraged” with Peter Wood

Over the course of roughly four generations, from around 1950 to the present, American culture has been transformed from a culture that believed in the value of self-control into a culture that celebrates self-expression. And that “self-expression” has now twisted into a new form of anger – political wrath – which makes a performance art out of our darkest emotions. So argues my guest on this episode, Peter Wood, author of Wrath: America Enraged and 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project and President of the National Association of Scholars. “The question is not whether we didn’t have to deal with anger before, but how we channeled it. What kind of cultural frame did we put around it? And that began to change. After World War II, the hero type of Gary Cooper who could maintain his cool under extreme pressure gave way to, think, of Allen Ginsberg, and his famous poem Howl.” “We’ve brought anger into our music, movies, and personal lives; and now, having step by step relinquished our old inhibitions around feeling and expressing anger, we […]