Once upon a hoopty...

The frustration that comes when the situation in which you find yourself is out of your control. It doesn't matter how smart you are or strong you are or how good a person or how bad a person. It is nature or fate or God or something taking a swing at your personal pride. Very little can be more humbling or belittling. And it is not easy to take sitting down. Responses vary, but anger is a common one. You want to fight against that greater power that somehow singled you out from doing what you wanted to do. You want to curse God and damn fate. But these powers seem so out of reach that trying to injure them or seek revenge on them is so obviously hopeless that it is much easier to blame a person. Your spouse. Your parent. Your boss. Your child? Your government. Because it always feels safer to blame someone who is one layer beyond people you actually know. Or you can take an even safer approach. Blame someone else's government. All your neighbors will agree with you, so your anger and resentment will be approved by your friends and peers. The other government has little say where you live, so you can denounce them all you want and they can do little about it. In fact, you know you have so many friends in your own country that you can probably hide there if you attack the other government and run away back home. Then, if the other country responds at all, especially if they respond in a manner that was more extensive than the way you attacked them, your nieghbors will side with you to continue to attack them. For revenge's sake. So then hate will continue to breed hate. Because you only feel good when you feel like you have the power to affect that other country's emotions and policy. It makes you feel powerful. And safe. And not impotent. Even though that's really what you are. To some degree, we all are.