Rage

Charles Darwin identified anger as one of the primary emotions and noted that anger and hatred eventually turn into rage. Darwin believed that few people “can long reflect about a hated person, without feeling and exhibiting signs of indignation or rage.” ¹ Rage best expresses the responses of the Bush administration to 9/11. In a speech delivered immediately after 9/11, President George W. Bush branded the attacks as “evil, despicable acts of terror.” ² Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, speaking in 2007, outlined important questions raised by the 9/11 attacks: “With the growing lethality and the increasing availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?” ³ For Rumsfeld, the answer lay in waging war against terrorists. From the beginning, the Bush administration focused on outrage and evoked warfare as the only reasonable and proper response to the “despicable acts” that had occurred on 9/11. Warfare calls for rage to motivate the troops. While the Bush administration fomented outrage against the terrorists and anyone who sided with their grievances, Hollywood audiences began frequenting combat movies that also expressed outrage, setting the emotional stage for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.