What is worth your anger?

So many things on everyone's lists that I can identify with, but the one thing that brings out those powerful emotions in me is harm done to children.

Agreed. The worst kind of abuse of power.

Lots of things on this thread, but at the moment Michael Gove tops the list.

Michael Gove doesn't make me angry. However, the mere thought of him fills me with both contempt and despair.

He makes me feel murderous - is that anger or something worse?

Worse!

At the moment my anger is firmly placed on Ian Brady for the agony he put that poor woman and family through, and who sadly lost her life today.

I feel angry at what Brady did and about the hurt he caused people. I don't feel angry that Winnie Johnson has died. I feel glad that she has died.

Except.... it is not anger. It is something else. Sorrow at evil. Sadness.

I get angry at right-wing ratbags in power, especially when they use the power for idealism-based horrors that hurt vulnerable people. (It is happening right now in Queensland Australia where I live)

I get angry at all injustices.

And bullying.

And all the stuff Greatnan said.

Joan - see my post about Mitt Romney's choice for a vice-presidential candidate- he wants to cut food subsidies for the poor, reduce spending on health for the elderly, and cut taxes for the rich!

Greatnan Romney is only a candidate.
If the American people vote Obama out, they will get the government they deserve.

But will the poor and elderly get the government they deserve?

Maybe not, but I bet they'd rather have an unfair democracy than an unfair autocracy. Poor in the US is not the same as poor in poorer countries.

Greatnan I've been watching Romney and his even worse VP candidate with growing horror. They go beyond right-wing idealism and have reached fascism imho.

I will be utterly surprised if Romney wins though - I can't imagine any woman voting for them, nor any non-white immigrant, nor African American, nor anyone on a low wage or benefits.....

Thank goodness I live somewhere relatively civilised. True, we have a nasty right wing state government, but compared to Romney's mob, our lot are red flag-waving Marxists!!

"Good" Mormon women may well vote for Romney.

Your third para is interesting, joan. I have thought for a while that there isn't much difference between the extremes at either end of the political ideological spectrum, even though how they get there may be very different. I think of it now as a circle. Either extreme leads to autocracy and dictatorship, often with military rulers, and masses of oppression of individuals' freedom.

I think you raise an interesting point Bags that 'poor in the US is not the same as poor in poorer countries'. It is undoubtedly true - but I do wonder how it must feel to be really poor in America; as a black person in the southern states for example, to have no healthcare and dreadful living conditions, all the time knowing that you live in the richest country in the world. I guess your personal experience is always just that - personal, but I'm sure the contrast with what others have must make it feel worse somehow.

They probably don't think about it much - too busy staying alive!

Average life expectancy in the States is still high by global standards, so in spite of not having a national health service (as we understand the term), their poor people are not doing too badly, it would seem. I'm not saying conditions for poor people in the US can't be or shouldn't be improved. I believe Obama is trying to address such things.

Yep, B - I've often though that if one goes far enough right, and far enough left, on the political 'swingometer', then the two ends will meet, with little, if any, light inbetween.

Anagram isn"t that the title of a song ?

Butty*, in the days when I was very active in Amnesty International, it always struck me that extreme right-wing regimes (at the time, Argentina and Chile) accused us of left-wing sympathies and Communist regimes such as China thought of us as right-wing.

Ditto Annobel. We would meet in my house and send letters as Amnesty members, so found quite a bit of correspondence appeared to have been opened. Interesting that paranoia about left-wing sympathies was alive and kicking here, too!

Interesting isn't it Anno, how our (British) understanding of political 'right wing ' and 'left wing' ideals are perceived quite differently in other countries.