Former Chicago mobster Frank Calabrese Jr. talks about his relationship with his mobster father Frank Calabrese Sr.
Jerry Davich
Metro columnist
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"Give a moment or two to the angry young man. With his foot in his mouth and his heart in his hand." -- Billy Joel
Angry young men.
Throughout history, they've brazenly broken women's hearts, bravely stormed the beaches of Normandy, wrongly bolstered the ranks of Nazi Germany, and recklessly toppled empires. They've rationalized their misdeeds, justified their crimes and amplified their lies as if it was truth.
Look around and you will find angry young men somewhere in your orbit.
They might be driving around in big pickup trucks blasting loud music and cruising for trouble. They might be hiding in their parent's basement attempting to connect with the real world as a keyboard warrior or conspiracy theorist. They might be in your neighborhood or house or bathroom mirror.
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Most of them have a telling commonality: They're desperate to be heard, outraged by something, and searching for a purpose in their volatile life. An angry young man without a sense of purpose is like a tool without a project. They are hammers looking for nails.
Angry young men who are looking for trouble usually find it. If they don't succeed, they create it. Or recreate it again and again. This personal habit becomes their social identity. It's who they are and who they aspire to be. Their purpose is confirmed, conformed and crystallized by connecting with other like-minded angry young men.
Look no further than a local bar, a military base, a college campus, a political rally or at their unrewarding job. Look in every crevice of society in any country and you'll find angry young men surging with testosterone, rhetoric, outrage and self-righteousness.
"There's a place in the world for the angry young man, with his working class ties and his radical plans."
These lyrics are from the song "Prelude/Angry Young Man," by Billy Joel, a musical hero of mine since adolescence. It's the sixth song on the 1976 album, "Turnstiles," a deep cut that bleeds cynical self-awareness, as if Joel was once an angry young man. (Of course he was.)
I first heard this song as an impressionable teenager who soon became an angry young man. I seemed to always be raging against something -- lame music, pop culture lemmings, political sycophants, religious hypocrites and anyone who I deemed not to be "deep" enough for combative intellectual arguments or abstract philosophical exploration.
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Yeah, I was a real peach in my twenties, which I have since described as the "existential angst" phase of my life. If I was a newspaper columnist at that time, or if social media existed, I would have (expletive) off most everyone eventually. I tend to do that now but with more tact and empathy.
There's a thin line between thought provoking and thoughtlessness. I've crossed it too many times as an angry young man and as a less angry middle-aged man.
Outrage still simmers on the back burner of my psyche like a roiling pot of rationalizations. It doesn't take much to turn up the flame but I'm much better at keeping myself from boiling over. I guess there are benefits of having gray hair, wrinkles and an aging body.
"And his honor is pure, and his courage as well. And he's fair, and he's true, and he's boring as hell. And he'll go to the grave as an angry old man."
From a psychological perspective, there are five common traits of an angry young man: he's a loner; struggles with disillusionment; feels disappointment from unmet expectations of a better life; has repeated troubles with women; and yearns for a life with profound meaning and societal importance. This description also sounds like many of the mass shooters in our mentally unhinged and trigger-happy country.
Displaced anger looks the same to the rest of us.
On the flip side of this argument, experts will say these angry young men have experienced childhood trauma of some kind, triggering self-medicated attempts to heal their deep wounds.
How many angry young men look for temporary comfort in bottomless beer cans or shot glasses? How many drive like maniacs, pick fights with strangers, and join the military because it chisels their aggressiveness? How many inhale, inject or digest endless substances to find a brief shelter from their demons?
Their rage guides them, manipulates them and fools them. If they're lucky they will eventually grow out of it or find someone to heal it. If not, they will remain angry young men inside the bodies of older bitter men. Look around, they're also everywhere looking for a woman to blame, a stranger to battle and a messiah to follow.
It's the timeless mantra of the angry young man.
"And he's proud of his scars and the battles he's lost. And he struggles and bleeds as he hangs on his cross. And he likes to be known as the angry young man."
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Metro columnist
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