Pleasures of Outrage

The attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon triggered more pleasure than pain in America. At the immediate level the pain belonged to the dead and the injured and their loved ones; the pain was felt also by those who looked on with empathy. There was also the pain, or rather the shock and dismay, of cruelly exposed vulnerabilities in the national manhood. But shock and dismay soon turned into rage and this anger, it is argued here, is intensely enjoyable.