What are you so mad about?

Everyone has 'em: the pet peeve, the hot button, the trigger that makes us howl at the elements like King Lear. It could be something big that pushes us out into the streets to march and chant and wave signs; it could be something seemingly insignificant that throws us into the dungeon of despair while everyone around can only guess at our mood. "Anger management" has become a common expression in so many forms, from the requirements of the courts to the human resource departments of many businesses.
It takes many forms as well. From the viciousness of a political campaign (fill in the candidate of your choice) to the road rage of the everyday rush hour, anger has becomes the commonest, if not the most socially permitted of emotions. Whether we are talking about the twisted criminal who tortures and kills or the well-intentioned (but bigoted) citizen who thinks the different is dangerous, anger is now more visible generally than, well, since we all had a common enemy we could join in demonizing and vilifying like the Nazis or the communists.
Anger, like all emotions, is not logical, so all the well-meaning pundits who point out the irrationality of these angry people miss the point. Rather than refuting their point of view logically, we need to find out the root cause of their anger.
Anger is what is known as a "secondary emotion." We are born with certain basic survival-based emotions: fear, love, hunger. Then, as we grow older, emotions become more complex. That's where anger comes in; we get angry based on a primary emotion. Think about it: we don't just get angry. We get angry because. When we are scared, when we are feeling unloved, when we have been rejected, then we get angry. We might not be willing to admit it, even to ourselves at first. But when we are forced to face that empty place inside of ourselves, we resent it and, sometimes, resist. In other words, we get angry.
But what about those almost instinctual, even instant, feelings? That person you dislike almost immediately after you meet? Well, let me introduce you to your doppelganger, someone who is close enough to you to be well-nigh your twin in certain ways. But this man or woman personifies those aspects of yourself you least like, resist even acknowledging to yourself you have. Carl Jung called it your shadow.
And sometimes the other represents something you have been fascinated by, but fought valiantly against. The homophobic person may be struggling with latent (or not-so-latent) homosexual urges. The person obsessed with success and earning money may have a deep fear of failure, and shows it by a nasty attitude toward low-income people.
Please understand: I am not saying anger is bad  per se. Like any other feeling, anger is not intrinsically good or bad. Like any other feeling, it is what we do with it that matters. But that's another story.