The very first strip of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts is a pretty angry one. After “good ol’ Charlie Brown” walks past a boy and a girl, the boy turns to no one in particular and says, “How I hate him!” It set the tone for fifty years of lost baseball games, destroyed kites, and unrequited love from the Little Red-Haired Girl. What incivility; what pessimism! And what a glimpse of truth. That first strip is shocking for the same reason that YouTube comments, Pitchfork reviews, and NBC’s treatment of Conan O’Brien are shocking: they reveal the casual callousness and undercurrent of anger that permeates everyday life. No one ought to be surprised about all of this, but, like Charlie Brown, who always tries to kick the football even though he knows that Lucy will just pull it away at the last second, we never quite allow ourselves to believe the worst in other people — or ourselves. Maybe that’s part of the reason why we’re so angry all the time.