The quietly enraged are dangerous adversaries. Because they’re quiet and seemingly calm, their rage, when it gets a chance to express itself, is perhaps the most chilling kind of rage of all, because it’s so stealthily hides in seemingly unruffled quiet and seems to explode out of nowhere. This kind of rage waits for the perfect moment to quietly and inexorably express itself, rendering a final opinion that cannot be appealed. You cannot come back from the conclusions a quietly angry person imposes when they finally make their disapproval clear.

Silence itself is perhaps the single greatest weapon for expressing rage.

The beauty of silence as a weapon is that it is infinitely deniable, you cannot prove the intent of silence, it could have no intent at all. It could certainly have nothing to do with you, why is everything about you? Isn’t your interpretation of my silence just your perverse gloss on it? I said nothing, nothing, how can I have expressed any opinion on what you asked me about, you demanding dick? 

How about we put you on the defensive by not answering, by maintaining complete and total silence, and when you cry out we will point to the proof, you are a goddamn, whining hot head.   

The beautiful part about expressing rage with silence is that any unbiased observer can plainly see that the person getting upset seems to be working themselves up about nothing. 

Picture a ten year old black kid, going to bed every night scared, in the sudden violence of the projects, gunshots outside,  in the stairwells, no-knock warrant, undercover police, housing authority security,  gangs. Picture answering that kid’s question about the segregated poverty all around him saying, with the smug assurance of Bagpiper Bill Barr, that there’s no systemic racism in America, and its debatable that there ever was race-based slavery here, let alone a Supreme Court ruling [1] that people like you had no rights a white man was bound to respect that you were bought and sold like property because that’s what you were, nothing racist about it.

And then, silence. 

The problem of scary, inherited poverty is yours, boy, and nobody else’s.

We can go down a long list of examples of this despicable technique, but consider the quietly enraged reactionary Samuel Alito and his enraging rationale for why Jesus Christ must have the final say in US Constitutional matters, establishment clause be goddamned. You have Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz, the other day, squealing like stuck pigs about the nefarious malefactor who leaked the Alito draft ruling that women have no rights a white man is bound to respect, the partisan far-left criminal leaker (someone like Ginni Thomas is a much likelier culprit, since the draft must now stand as it is, with no retreat!) who silently stole and leaked a confidential Supreme Court draft decision, in an effort to politicize the fairest court an emissary of Jesus Christ Himself could appoint, to defend the unborn, the rights of good people not to be exposed to perverts, to lies about good, white Christian children, etc.

Makes me wanna holler.

Into the silence of a prosecutorial judge’s quick deliberation, sentence already in hand, not making eye contact as he listens impatiently to your version of events. Lots of cases, nothing personal, I have a lot of hate in my heart, I’m not giving you eye contact as you make your case because, as you know, I am not listening, too enraged. 

Silence, the verdict and punishment already in the mail. 

[1]

Obvious Commie twaddle:

Chief Justice Roger Taney (above) bluntly and maliciously described the status of persons of African origin in the 1857 Dred Scott decision:

“[Black people] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it.”