I don't know any of these people, and I haven't had encounters with them. But I do have a theory about what is driving their behavior and their anger.
Large swaths of our society have been left behind in this economy. Jobs that people used to have have moved overseas, or vanished entirely. Jobs that are now available offer lower pay, fewer benefits, and worse working conditions. For many, there simply are no jobs at all.
We see the effects of this in public health statistics. Most notably, life expectancy in the U.S. is now declining. This is historically unprecedented: life expectancy in the U.S. used to rise year-over-year, and it is still rising in other developed countries.
You might think that the people who would be most affected by this would be those at the very bottom: the poor, minorities, recent immigrants. In fact, premature deaths are concentrated in a different demographic: middle-aged white working-class men. And what these people are dying of is alcohol, drug overdoses, and suicide: deaths of despair.
The ones who aren't dying are angry—outraged—and they should be. But for a great many of them, the primary force that informs and structures their outrage is Fox News.
But Fox News is also a massive, ongoing program of misdirection. The outrage that Fox News generates is never directed at the actual causes of injustice or inequality in our society. Instead, Fox presents an endless parade of trivial grievances and imagined insults, perpetrated upon the good working people of America by liberals—by liberal elites!
In this world of outrage, no slight is too slight; no offense too trivial; in fact, it often seem that the more trivial the better. My favorite example is Obama's tan suit. One day when he was president, Obama wore a tan suit. Fox news was outraged! A tan suit! Obama was disrespecting the office of the president! He was disrespecting you, the good people of America!
Fox news outrage has the social dynamics of a professional wrestling match. It's all about the image, the strut, the smackdown; who's tougher than who; who commands respect.
One reason for all this faux outrage is that pro wrestling makes better television than Paul Krugman explaining the intricacies of the sub-prime lending crisis, or credit default swaps, or shadow banking, or GDP multipliers, or the health insurance market.
A more important reason is that Fox News is an instrument of plutocrats, and it is not at all in the interest of plutocrats for ordinary people to understand the real causes of their suffering. If ordinary people understood that they are playing a losing game in an economy that has been rigged against them, there would be political pressure to reign in the 1% and unrig the economy. If ordinary people were outraged about the things that they ought to be outraged about, they would be erecting guillotines in the public square.
A salient feature of Fox News outrage is that it is eternal: it never resolves. In this endless stream of morality plays there is no justice; evildoers are never brought to account; liberals are never put in their place. (Tucker Carlson's eyes never uncross.) The viewer is kept always at the nadir of despair: fearful, helpless and humiliated.
Again, this makes good television. Western culture generally values individualism. The United States was born of a struggle for political freedom. Much of our economy runs on a free market, and entrepreneurship is highly regarded—if not outright exalted.
And again, this very much serves corporate interests. Amazon and Walmart do not want to be subject to workplace regulation and minimum wages laws. They certainly do not want to be negotiating pay and working conditions with a union. No, they want each worker to come to them as an individual, freely negotiating for the best deal that worker can get. And in that free negotiation, these massive corporations can exploit their oligopsony power and their enormous advantages in organization, information, resources and flexibility to maximally screw each individual worker.
The point of individualism is to make life better for individuals, and sometimes the way that individuals make their lives better is by coming together in community and regulating their behavior in various ways. Fox News incessantly gainsays anything that might limit the absolute freedom of each individual to do whatever they want at the instant. In doing so, they conveniently sweep away any possibility of individuals joining in community, or a labor union, or a political movement, or anything else that might threaten or inconvenience the plutocrats.
Fox News holds out the individual as some kind of noble ideal, but the individualism that they tout is trivialized. It is the individualism of the 4-year old, who's autonomy consists of saying, "I won't eat my peas—you can't make me!"
Fox News purports to address their viewers' problems and offer a way forward. But the tools that Fox News gives its viewers—the manufactured outrage, the trivialized individuality—these tools are useless for the problems that their viewers actually face.
Life is not a pro-wrestling match. People are trapped in low-wage, dehumanizing, debilitating jobs, but putting on war paint and talking trash to their management isn't going to help.
Likewise, no one ever directly challenges their freedom. People in this country are generally "free" to do what they want. It's just that if they don't do what their employer wants they find themselves turfed out of a job with no way to support themselves.
Every night people tune in to Fox news and watch the good fight, and every day they go out and lose. What makes this specially maddening is that they don't fight and lose. Instead, the elites have arranged for them to lose without a fight. The American Dream vanishes before their eyes, like the queen in a game of 3-card Monty.
The government tells them to wear a mask? They won't! It infringes
their freedom. They won't eat their peas wear a mask and
no one can make them.
And then someone calls them on it? Someone on the street tells them to put on a mask? Some security guard won't let them into the store without a mask? Oooooooo!!! It's the smackdown. They're going to the mat on this one. Now we're going to see who's tough and who's not.
So half the country is running around without masks, and COVID-19 continues to spread through the population.