Bitterness is a serious state of mind.

As I get ready for Passover seder on Saturday night, I'm thinking a lot about bitterness. We eat maror, or bitter herb:

Maror (מָרוֹר mārôr) also spelled Marror refers to the bitter herbs that are eaten at the Passover Seder. The word derives from the Hebrew word מר — "bitter." According to the Haggadah, the traditional text which is recited at the Seder and which defines the Seder's form and customs, the maror symbolizes the bitterness of slavery in Egypt. The following verse from the Torah underscores that symbolism: "And they embittered (וימררו) their lives with hard labor, with mortar and with bricks and with all manner of labor in the field; any labor that they made them do was with hard labor" (Exodus 1:14).

We taste bitterness to remind us to be grateful and to reflect on our current life (I don't know about you, but my life sure beats slavery under Pharaoh). Reading the news and polls, it seems bitterness abounds among us now. People are bitter when they have given up hope, when they feel oppressed by forces beyond their control. That sounds like the fallout of the current economy for many of us. It's also a buzzword in election coverage, thanks to Obama' recent comment about working and middle class Americans:

"It's not surprising that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Obama believes many Americans are bitter. I don't know, but I wouldn't blame them if they are, judging by the economic news and rising costs of just about everything so that a family can't live what we have so long considered to be an average middle class lifestyle. And so I believe Obama did not "mangle" his intent that many Americans are bitter. I'm not going to get into the clinging to guns and immigration part. I'm a Northern latte liberal and I can't go there.

But we need to think twice before we toss around the word "bitterness" as an apt descriptor for our times. Are we bitter or are we angry? I love this argument from Scarecrow at Firedoglake that notes that if Hillary Clinton and the Republicans attack Obama for calling many of us bitter then we'll forget that we're actually mad as hell....but not at Obama. We're mad at George Bush, the Congress, the Fed, Wall Street, ourselves for investing poorly. We're angry. But anger implies action. Bitter implies despair. So if you're tasting bitter herbs this weekend, taste the bitterness, reflect on your ancestors, and gauge your anger. Then let's figure out how to get our country on track.