Anger Management 101

--Charles Barsotti

Don't talk to me for about a week
I'm sorry it just hurts to explain
There's something going on that makes my guts ache
I got guilt I got fear I got regret
I'm just a panic stricken waste I'm such a jerk
--I'm Free Now, Morphine
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There are three distinguishing adjectives for describing a combat arms soldier -- hostile, agile and mobile.

These are the qualities needed to complete the mission. Only three things: shoot, move and communicate. Being hostile and being a shooter is usually equated with anger. In our society, anger and destruction are also sanctioned impulses for boys, unlike say, fear or compassion. (We're not talking extreme West Coast here.) Hence G.I. Joe and Tonka trucks. Barney ("I Love You") and the like are still considered pretty fey.

So Ranger finds himself as a fully aged adult male wavering between a non-emotional state and anger. If he is feeling really emotional, the anger may become rage. He is writing about this because several people have pointed his anger out to him recently. It must be the residue of New Year's good cheer.

Aggression and anger are lauded in the military arena, but not so much in the civilian, outside of cutthroat boardrooms. He is not alone in his anger; he and many of his fellow angry veterans could fill a stadium or two. Anger and rage -- combine these and you have a Ranger.

Rangers are selected and trained to be violent. We are promoted and rewarded with medals for our hostile nature, and ejected from active service without decompression or deprogramming, and expected to become loving, feeling beings. Well, I'm not, and I'm tired of being apologetic for that fact.

Society acts dumbfounded when the Ft. Carson, Colorado, veterans showed a spike in their rates of murder and other violent crimes (A Focus on Violence by Returning GI's.) All vets came by their attitudes honestly so why harass them for their honest reaction, which is often rage and hostility? This is not to exonerate criminals for their crimes, but reintegration does not just happen, and the psychiatric community is often clueless, and certainly underfunded.

If society doesn't want to deal with and accept this, then let's develop a new class of Terminators, a true warrior class a la the Greek concept, separate from society.

Until then you have a lot of Rangers, and they are not always able to channelize their anger once back in any productive manner.