Ressentiment is a fancy French word that has been used by philosophers and intellectuals since the 19th century to describe a feeling of hostility that transcends mere personal irritation.

It reflects a bigger and more complex emotion than simple resentment and is something that simmers under the thin skins of beleaguered people everywhere.

You don't need actually to know the person you're angry at to feel ressentiment. The objects are seen to be privileged, entitled and haughty. And they don't even have to be fat capitalists or mandarin bureaucrats.

In Toronto, in fact, ressentiment is aimed at a strange, proletarian breed: the streetcar drivers and ticket takers who work for the Toronto Transit Commission, the TTC.

Did we mention strikes? Three TTC strikes over the past 11 years, all short-lived. (Reuters)

By now the whole country has feasted on the stories and surreptitious photos of the uncivil war occurring on Toronto's wintry, grey streets.

Instead of AK-47s, Toronto transit guerrillas are armed with cellphone cameras — to snap pictures of sleeping ticket agents.

One video, posted to YouTube, shows a driver taking a seven-minute-long coffee (and we suppose) bathroom break, while his passengers were forced to stew in the bus in their own bodily fluids, so to speak.

In a lead editorial called "The Culture of Compliancy," the Toronto Star, which likes to see itself as the champion of the little guy, bemoans the finger pointing that has escalated.

"Emotions are running too high," the Star intoned, its editorial hands wringing madly.

Rampant rudeness

Now, the reasons for this fight are routinely catalogued: fare hikes on top of frequent service breakdowns, overcrowding, and buses and streetcars that can't seem to keep to a proper schedule.

Add in squeezed service, too few resources, strikes (can't forget that one), unruly passengers and, at times, a defensive and surly workforce.

Two years ago, the Star reported transit operators were experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder at four times the rate of policemen.

According to TTC posters, rude passengers are an occupational hazard and at least one driver is "assaulted" somehow every day.

But why do I use the word ressentiment, instead of something simpler, like just plain rudeness emanating from all sides?

Let you tell you a story I witnessed the other day, which will be familiar to any transit rider in Toronto or, perhaps, anywhere nowadays.

Battlecar Galactica

I was riding along in one streetcar when, after a non-eventful few minutes, we came upon another, derailed, streetcar stuck in the middle of the road. Like a red, beached whale, it was blocking streetcar traffic in both directions.

I clutched my rumpled transfer, hoping it was the correct one and not a castoff from another time that would be turned away by the operators, the powers that be. Then I walked the two blocks to where the TTC had redirected other cars and hopped on to one them.

So did another passenger, without a transfer. But the driver let him on anyway.

That didn't stop the passenger, however, from complaining. He was young, perhaps a student, somewhat rumpled and full of complaints. Not foul-mouthed but close. Angry, indignant.

The stream of insults made the streetcar driver visibly nervous. He pleaded with the passenger. "Look, I let you on the car without a transfer, didn't I?"

But apparently that wasn't good enough.

The argument — about nothing really — started heating up. The passenger snarled and the driver's voice began to rise. He was going to call his supervisor. He, the driver, had done the right thing, he kept saying.

The rest of us, his audience, were largely silent, on the sidelines.

Whose public?

The incident didn't seem to warrant the anger and the fight going on right before our eyes.

Clearly, some underlying nerve had been touched on each side, ragged passenger and driver.

But when both parties to a disagreement are fighting shadows, that is when ressentiment raises its ugly head.

It is not hard to imagine unemployed riders resenting the supposedly entitled transit workers who seem to be able to sleep on the job and do pretty much whatever they want.

Add in the fact that these workers have what appear to be cushy union contracts and couldn't seem to care less about the public, and you have a pretty toxic mix right there.

In fact, during the incident I described, one passenger piped up, "That's our transit for you, paid for by the public and run privately!"

Such are the resentments that bubble up in a time of scarcity.

A protected union member with a job becomes (for some) the representative of some working-class aristocracy, feeding off the public trough.

Downwardly mobile

There was a time when working in a factory, or on a dull split-shift job like driving a city bus, seemed like something most people wouldn't ever want to do.

Assembly line work! Too boring. Now, with the closing of manufacturing plants, everywhere, nobody talks about boring anymore.

In fact, if a new plant opened tomorrow, 10,000 people would probably line up for the privilege of gladly being bored till payday.

So, in a time of deep recession, to see angry (TTC) workers with jobs can seem like a downright slap in the face.

In sunnier times, ressentiment diminishes. People seem to ease their way through the public thoroughfare, sheltered by ready cash and a patina of optimism.

But in times of scarcity, people get prickly. They compare and contrast. Ressentiment, probably always just below the surface, bubbles over.

You've heard of envying celebrities, the rich and famous. Now we seem to be in an age when envy is downwardly mobile.

Transit ticket takers and bus drivers today take their place alongside big-whig financiers, lawyers and politicians as those we love to hate.

Ressentiment. Call it a downward transfer of our disaffection, so to speak.