If you’re required to analyze American politics all day for work, or you somehow enjoy this form of pain, it’s hard to miss how emotional the whole enterprise has become in recent decades.
I notice the studies on emotions and party affiliation were done prior to Trump's election. I wonder what the studies would show now? What I'm seeing from Democrats since last November is fear bordering on hysteria. And I get it. I was in a constant state of terror over Trump's election from 2016 to 2020. By 2022, I realized I'd been manipulated - badly - by legacy media like the NYT, Wapo, and mostly by MSNBC (which I watched religiously).
I voted for Trump last November, and he did what I voted for: closed the border, got males out of female sports, and gave his solid support to Israel. I'm feeling pretty content.
People are more emotional, because federal governance is no longer incremental and remote. Historically, much of what happened in DC did not greatly affect Americans personally, day to day, unless they were military members, we had a war or a national tragedy, like 9/11.
Then for many, the medical system they utilized their entire lives, came to an end. If you liked your doctor, no one cared. They were no longer your doctor. Suddenly, your new MD was far more interested if you had firearms in your home, then in your cholesterol levels.
That was encored by Americans being informed, eventually they would only be allowed to drive one type of vehicle and prepare dinner, only on a certain cook top. The piece de resistance, however, was the open border. Life will never, remotely, be the same in some parts of the country. US education will, likely, never be the same. 10 million mostly impoverished and sparsely educated people, purposefully imported into a knowledge economy, on the cusp of AI and robots, that will soon cause massive job losses all across the country? What could possibly go wrong?
Moreover, the moment Dems return to power, the intrusions into everyday American life are likely to return, or be worse. There is absolutely nothing to prevent the dissolution of the Southern Border again. In a matter of weeks, 5K-10K unvetted people a day, could again be walking into Texas.
Perhaps next time Dems run the electoral table, air conditioning, far more necessary in Red States than Blue ones, will be regulated to the point it becomes unaffordable for 75% of Americans. Maybe electricity is suddenly a buck a kWh, meat is rationed, or Kindergartners are handed plastic appendages to try out, changing genders. The list of realistic terrifying possibilities is endless. People are more emotional, because there is far more at stake.
No surprise. The business model of major media is to click bait their chosen political demographic. Challenging a given station’s narrative on air is quite simply bad for business. Even more than our generally substandard politicians, American media writ large has failed the challenge and opportunity of supporting a well-informed electorate. Hence their demise.
It is really quite simple--the mass adoption of social media, via smartphones, meant the mass application of social media algorithms to everyone, all around the world, at the same time.
These algorithms are not optimized for long-term engagement, because it is harder and costlier to measure long-term engagement. Long-term engagement is composed of more complex relationships, like friendship, and more long-developing emotions, like fellowship and affection.
The easiest and cheapest way to generate clicks and get people's attention is to stoke the 'fight-or-flight' instincts--fear, anger, and paranoia. That's what the algorithms are optimized for, and those are the emotions they augment at the expense of more stable, productive, but longer-gestating ones.
The algorithms also work invisibly--unlike traditional advertising, people do not know that they are being manipulated. They are also constantly adjusting, at the micro-level, by way of processing personal user data, which smartphones are constantly generating, and which is what social media companies capture and sell to advertisers to generate profit. Most people don't know that X, Google, Meta, etc.'s 'product' is not their platform--it is information about *you*.
Apply that to billions of people, at the global level, and you get mass paranoia and crankiness. Conspiracy theories rise in popularity, and demagogues whose whole schtick is generating anger, paranoia, and crankiness see the most success in politics. Trump was the pioneer here and among the most mendacious beneficiaries of the trend--but AOC is very much cut from the same cloth. That's how the vote share of BOTH Trump AND AOC rose in AOC's district. They are two sides of the same political coin.
Oh please, stop. When some -- hardly a majority -- of Americans fail to distinguish between "overly emotional politics" and burning Teslas or shooting federal ICE agents, then civil order breaks down and lawlessness becomes the norm. The cause-and-effect here is not rocket science. Nor, left unchecked, is the predictable ultimate consequence when members of Congress, by their words and deeds, encourage escalation of fact-free disruption.
The above is correct, to a point, but avoids the historical policy decisions that cost Dems the election and are causing unusual levels of political bifurcation.
Inflation caused by trillions in needless spending, the purposeful dissolution of the Southern Border and the social engineering of children, cost Dems the election. Other issues are rounding errors.
Social media or not, Biden's administration was so far Left, not even Carter compares. Had 100 staunch Reps been gathered in a room a month before the 2020 election and told Dems planned to purposefully dissolve the Southern Border and wave in 10 million unvetted migrants, 99 of the 100, would have never believed the plan. It was that audacious and out of the historical norm.
To all but the Dem ruling class, the policy is incomprehensible. Yet Dem leaders continue to loudly advocate for unlimited migration of nonviolent migrants. Until a Dem leader, at least, feigns repudiation of the Great Biden Migration, emotions are going to run, very high.
Guys, I hear this a lot. As a historian, I have to say "Nyet." Our politics, even with all the "anger," today are vastly more civil than 200 years ago. President Madison was so threatened by a senator arguing with him that as the Senator reached for his pistol in his coat, Maddie grabbed the fireplace poker. Nothing came of it. In the 1830s there was a KNIFE FIGHT on the floor of the Arkansas House that left one dead, gutted. Well up until the eve of the Civil War, it was commonplace for Congressmen and Senators to carry weapons onto the chambers' floor. Of course, most people know of Preston Brooks, who nearly beat Senator Charles Sumner to death with a heavy cane. Even into the 20th century, Teddy Roosevelt threatened to throw business leaders "out the window" if they didn't comply.
"Partisan path dependency requires Democrats to uniformly hate and despise everything that Trump is doing and it also requires Republicans to uniformly love and praise his every action."
So by this piece it is Republicans that are emotional and Democrats are all rational, logical, calm and pragmatic.
You see, this isn't even the issue. The issue is crap fake facts like this that masquerade as legitimate while people out in the world see and experience reality. Sure, Republicans are protesting and rioting and burning down low-income communities. Sure, it is the Republicans that are all emotional.
What are you talking about? The piece doesn't say that at all and clearly charges both Democrats and Republicans with overly emotional and angry rhetorical politics as seen in the data.
Check the graphs from the "unbiased" Harvard study.
There is no way.
The analogy is the Democrat wife goes insane in anger because the Republican husband tell her she does in fact look fat in those jeans... she kills the dog, burns down the house and brainwashes the children to think their dad is a rapist and pedophile.
I don't think you're being fully self-aware here, because you don't seem to be grasping the irony in what you're saying.
You are calling a group of people irrational and unable to regulate their emotions.
Then, when presented with evidence that cuts against your opinions about the world, you call it 'fake', (an irrational thing to do without evidence) and spew hatred towards that group of people. (a manner of unregulated emotion)
It is not only classic projection, but also a sign that you really need to get out of your bubble, meet more people in more places, and be more open-minded about who those you meet might be like. Bounce around America enough, and meet enough of its inhabitants in enough places, and you'll see that there are plenty of calm and pragmatic people in both parties, and plenty of irrational and emotionally unregulated ones, too. And that’s *despite* the increasing degree of emotion involved in our politics. The personalities and psychological profiles of the people in either party--including the 'swing' voters--are very diverse.
I subscribe to as many lefty sources as moderate and right. I live in a liberal state in a liberal college town. I have a filing cabinet of irrational positions, opinions, choices and actions from liberals that my conservative contacts power through to logical conclusions. My family is largely blue collar from the Midwest. This fact of left liberals owning weaker emotional regulation is constantly tested and proved. Rage drives Democrat politics. A lot of it female rage.
I think it is you in a bubble, not me.
I have not spewed any hatred. I don’t hate. Your projection of what I wrote as hate is a perfect example of unregulated emotions.
There are certainly some calm and pragmatic people, but few that call themselves Democrat these days.
Conclusions based off interactions with people in a single state in a single college town are conclusions forged in a bubble, especially if you approach people with a priori assumptions about who they are based on their partisan associations.
And making all Democrats analogous to insane wives who burn down houses and brainwash children is an example of hatred, so yes, you have indeed spewed some. That you can't see it suggests the lens you are using to view the world is making a whole lot of reasonable people in the ranks of the nation invisible.
On account of an itinerant life I've found liberal and centrist Democrats who have weathered political arguments without once losing their cool, and have perfectly amicable relationships with people who disagree with them politically, in, among other places, the suburbs and city centers of the Quad Cities and Philadelphia, Iowa farm country, rural Illinois, welding machinist firms in the Twin Cities, and the Montana mountain town in which one of my best buds has a beer practically every weekend with his father-in-law, where they poke fun at each other's diametrically opposed political opinions.
Among all these places, I've bumped into just as many Republicans and conservatives who are equally calm and civil--and I've bumped into a whole lot of both conservatives and liberals who lose their cool the moment someone disagrees with them. (And since the advent of social media I've seen the ranks of the latter groups increase, with the worst specimens being those who spend way too much time on social media, and get their views about the world and its people there.) But I don't make any assumptions about who people are when I learn their partisan/ideological affiliation--because if I did, I'd likely never befriend, or perceive, anyone who doesn't fit into the framework of those assumptions.
"And making all Democrats analogous to insane wives who burn down houses and brainwash children is an example of hatred,"
No, it is not.
You are one of those "words are violence" people.
To sit in judgment claiming I am in a bubble and hateful for pointing out the problem with the left and uncontrolled emotions by doing the very same you claim I am doing... well I will just add it to my growing pile of evidence.
Look at how much ink you wasted. What motivates you if not rage?
I am a CEO with a long corporate career with a Linked-in network of thousands of people that I know from all over the nation and world. I gave you an example of the college town, but my observations are significantly broad and deep and I seek the truth and to learn. I am a constant student. You don't get to my level of career success being in a bubble. Unlike you, I am never resistant to admitting when I am wrong. In this case you have failed to convince me that you have a strong enough understanding of the topics to justify wasting this much of your time. Your position should be one where you ask more questions that attempt to "teach" me. You are not the teacher, you are the student.
I'm merely pointing out several failures of reasoning and recommending a socially healthy means by which you might better remedy them. But perhaps it needs to be spelled out in more detail.
The first failure of reason lies in making broad categorical generalizations about a huge and diverse group of people (there are around 79 million registered Democrats in the United States) without any rigorous, systematic body of evidence to support said claim. Thus far you have provided no evidence of sufficient breadth to substantiate your proposition that these 49 million people are all "rage-driven and characterized by poorly regulated emotions," yet you continue to claim it is true. (I shouldn't have to tell you why one's LinkedIn network does not meet such an evidentiary standard, but I will spell it out for you if you insist)
The second failure of reason is the denial that making such a claim AND analogizing these people to a woman who kills her dog does not constitute an instance of expressing "extreme dislike or disgust" for said people, which is the definition of 'hatred'. (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hatred)
And the last failure of reason lies in not recognizing that these first two consequentially yield an act of self-refutation, in that you are attempting to argue a large group of people are hateful and irrational, but doing so using irrational arguments--while making hateful statements about them.
To remedy these misunderstandings on your part, I'm simply recommending making more Democratic friends in a wider variety of locations and contexts. And as a fellow CEO, I regret to inform you, we are no more immune from hermetically sealing ourselves inside social bubbles than anyone else. If you would like a list of examples of this phenomenon, I can provide them--but Google will furnish you with plenty on its own.
There are no failures in reason on my end, only your end.
First, a broad categorization is fine when talking about the common demonstrate behavior of defined group of people. There are always exceptions but the exceptions are not the rule. Republicans tend to oppose abortion but not all of them. However, it is fine to say "Republicans oppose abortion" because the majority poll as opposing abortion at some level.
Female rage over Dodd (https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/19/dobbs-2022-election-abortion-00074426) helped Democrat mitigate a red wave in the 2022 midterm elections. Anger, frustration and rage fuel all the protests and riots we have had... all left and Democrat. I comment on many left leaning Substacks and right-leaning Substacks where the emotional volume is much, much higher on the left Substacks. BlueSky is a place to easily set off an explosion of blue haired single cat lady freakout with a simple comment that challenges their woke belief.
You demonstrate the point here. You want to claim my analogy that the upset wife killed the family dog as "hate". It is laughable because there was no emotion at all backing my writing of that, but you had such a strong emotional reaction that you cannot control, that you blame me for causing you such turmoil by calling it hate.
When Democrats learn that emotions rule they can start winning. Policy discussions aren’t listened to except by elites. Gut issues determine elections.
All this bull crap aside, WHEN ARE DEMOCRATS GOING TO CONDEMN THE VIOLENCE AGAINST ICE AGENTS WHO ARE CARRYING OUT THE LAW. Whether you like it or not, ICE is doing their lawful job, masks on or masks off. Democrat Swawell on NewsNation with Cuomo wouldn't condemn the violence, but condemned ICE agents for wearing masks. What a jackass and he wants to run for president.
~ one tell that this Harvard paper is a perfect example of a partisan hit job is that they did not measure content for humor. Lefties are tone deaf when it comes to jokes & satire. And of, course, they can't meme. I call BS on methods, lack of depth, and obvious bias. ~
With the violence calls by progressives increasing everyday, when will the killing violence start? Do ICE agents now need over watch protection? I would say yes. Those days are coming. Making light of such threats have never lead the Dems to any logical or peaceful ending to anything. And they have never believed the words of those issuing them if morning line with everyone needs to live in a Democracy. We are well beyond Dem policies that will bring us together. They don’t have them and give no indication they are interested in any such thing. And we could say much the same of Republicans. Except they are no where near the hysterical violence scene like the Dems. But they are much better armed with more guys than Soros is giving his side.
Halpin’s call for a “stop-evaluate-wait and see” approach is admirable in theory, but difficult in practice.
Where, exactly, is the average voter supposed to find reliable, dispassionate information these days? In an era saturated with "alternative facts," conspiracy narratives, and emotionally charged propaganda from all sides, distinguishing real evidence from noise is no small feat.
Even when credible data is available, how many Americans possess the training—or see role models—necessary to weigh it effectively? Critical thinking is rarely modeled in our political culture, which rewards outrage over discernment and tribal loyalty over intellectual honesty.
The result is a feedback loop of emotional manipulation with very few exits.
Good point. My only suggestion would be to pick one reliable source of basic factual information and read it regularly. The Economist is my preferred one but there are others. Yes, the publication has an old school European "liberal" point of view, but the descriptive articles and analysis and data charts are unmatched.
I notice the studies on emotions and party affiliation were done prior to Trump's election. I wonder what the studies would show now? What I'm seeing from Democrats since last November is fear bordering on hysteria. And I get it. I was in a constant state of terror over Trump's election from 2016 to 2020. By 2022, I realized I'd been manipulated - badly - by legacy media like the NYT, Wapo, and mostly by MSNBC (which I watched religiously).
I voted for Trump last November, and he did what I voted for: closed the border, got males out of female sports, and gave his solid support to Israel. I'm feeling pretty content.
People are more emotional, because federal governance is no longer incremental and remote. Historically, much of what happened in DC did not greatly affect Americans personally, day to day, unless they were military members, we had a war or a national tragedy, like 9/11.
Then for many, the medical system they utilized their entire lives, came to an end. If you liked your doctor, no one cared. They were no longer your doctor. Suddenly, your new MD was far more interested if you had firearms in your home, then in your cholesterol levels.
That was encored by Americans being informed, eventually they would only be allowed to drive one type of vehicle and prepare dinner, only on a certain cook top. The piece de resistance, however, was the open border. Life will never, remotely, be the same in some parts of the country. US education will, likely, never be the same. 10 million mostly impoverished and sparsely educated people, purposefully imported into a knowledge economy, on the cusp of AI and robots, that will soon cause massive job losses all across the country? What could possibly go wrong?
Moreover, the moment Dems return to power, the intrusions into everyday American life are likely to return, or be worse. There is absolutely nothing to prevent the dissolution of the Southern Border again. In a matter of weeks, 5K-10K unvetted people a day, could again be walking into Texas.
Perhaps next time Dems run the electoral table, air conditioning, far more necessary in Red States than Blue ones, will be regulated to the point it becomes unaffordable for 75% of Americans. Maybe electricity is suddenly a buck a kWh, meat is rationed, or Kindergartners are handed plastic appendages to try out, changing genders. The list of realistic terrifying possibilities is endless. People are more emotional, because there is far more at stake.
We used to be a high trust society. We are no longer one.
No surprise. The business model of major media is to click bait their chosen political demographic. Challenging a given station’s narrative on air is quite simply bad for business. Even more than our generally substandard politicians, American media writ large has failed the challenge and opportunity of supporting a well-informed electorate. Hence their demise.
It is really quite simple--the mass adoption of social media, via smartphones, meant the mass application of social media algorithms to everyone, all around the world, at the same time.
These algorithms are not optimized for long-term engagement, because it is harder and costlier to measure long-term engagement. Long-term engagement is composed of more complex relationships, like friendship, and more long-developing emotions, like fellowship and affection.
The easiest and cheapest way to generate clicks and get people's attention is to stoke the 'fight-or-flight' instincts--fear, anger, and paranoia. That's what the algorithms are optimized for, and those are the emotions they augment at the expense of more stable, productive, but longer-gestating ones.
The algorithms also work invisibly--unlike traditional advertising, people do not know that they are being manipulated. They are also constantly adjusting, at the micro-level, by way of processing personal user data, which smartphones are constantly generating, and which is what social media companies capture and sell to advertisers to generate profit. Most people don't know that X, Google, Meta, etc.'s 'product' is not their platform--it is information about *you*.
Apply that to billions of people, at the global level, and you get mass paranoia and crankiness. Conspiracy theories rise in popularity, and demagogues whose whole schtick is generating anger, paranoia, and crankiness see the most success in politics. Trump was the pioneer here and among the most mendacious beneficiaries of the trend--but AOC is very much cut from the same cloth. That's how the vote share of BOTH Trump AND AOC rose in AOC's district. They are two sides of the same political coin.
Oh please, stop. When some -- hardly a majority -- of Americans fail to distinguish between "overly emotional politics" and burning Teslas or shooting federal ICE agents, then civil order breaks down and lawlessness becomes the norm. The cause-and-effect here is not rocket science. Nor, left unchecked, is the predictable ultimate consequence when members of Congress, by their words and deeds, encourage escalation of fact-free disruption.
The above is correct, to a point, but avoids the historical policy decisions that cost Dems the election and are causing unusual levels of political bifurcation.
Inflation caused by trillions in needless spending, the purposeful dissolution of the Southern Border and the social engineering of children, cost Dems the election. Other issues are rounding errors.
Social media or not, Biden's administration was so far Left, not even Carter compares. Had 100 staunch Reps been gathered in a room a month before the 2020 election and told Dems planned to purposefully dissolve the Southern Border and wave in 10 million unvetted migrants, 99 of the 100, would have never believed the plan. It was that audacious and out of the historical norm.
To all but the Dem ruling class, the policy is incomprehensible. Yet Dem leaders continue to loudly advocate for unlimited migration of nonviolent migrants. Until a Dem leader, at least, feigns repudiation of the Great Biden Migration, emotions are going to run, very high.
Guys, I hear this a lot. As a historian, I have to say "Nyet." Our politics, even with all the "anger," today are vastly more civil than 200 years ago. President Madison was so threatened by a senator arguing with him that as the Senator reached for his pistol in his coat, Maddie grabbed the fireplace poker. Nothing came of it. In the 1830s there was a KNIFE FIGHT on the floor of the Arkansas House that left one dead, gutted. Well up until the eve of the Civil War, it was commonplace for Congressmen and Senators to carry weapons onto the chambers' floor. Of course, most people know of Preston Brooks, who nearly beat Senator Charles Sumner to death with a heavy cane. Even into the 20th century, Teddy Roosevelt threatened to throw business leaders "out the window" if they didn't comply.
It's true, Larry. A close reading of the history of American politics makes it a wonder we've come so far. Thanks for adding that perspective.
The “stop-evaluate-wait and see" method is a description of being a liberal thinker.
Great article. Serious points, but also funny! Thanks John.
"Partisan path dependency requires Democrats to uniformly hate and despise everything that Trump is doing and it also requires Republicans to uniformly love and praise his every action."
A well-articulated, excellent point John.
Thanks, cheers!
So by this piece it is Republicans that are emotional and Democrats are all rational, logical, calm and pragmatic.
You see, this isn't even the issue. The issue is crap fake facts like this that masquerade as legitimate while people out in the world see and experience reality. Sure, Republicans are protesting and rioting and burning down low-income communities. Sure, it is the Republicans that are all emotional.
That is inane.
What are you talking about? The piece doesn't say that at all and clearly charges both Democrats and Republicans with overly emotional and angry rhetorical politics as seen in the data.
Check the graphs from the "unbiased" Harvard study.
There is no way.
The analogy is the Democrat wife goes insane in anger because the Republican husband tell her she does in fact look fat in those jeans... she kills the dog, burns down the house and brainwashes the children to think their dad is a rapist and pedophile.
He yells at her in court.
And now he is the emotional one.
I agree the charts are pretty biased, useless, and outdated. Otherwise I enjoyed the article.
I don't think you're being fully self-aware here, because you don't seem to be grasping the irony in what you're saying.
You are calling a group of people irrational and unable to regulate their emotions.
Then, when presented with evidence that cuts against your opinions about the world, you call it 'fake', (an irrational thing to do without evidence) and spew hatred towards that group of people. (a manner of unregulated emotion)
It is not only classic projection, but also a sign that you really need to get out of your bubble, meet more people in more places, and be more open-minded about who those you meet might be like. Bounce around America enough, and meet enough of its inhabitants in enough places, and you'll see that there are plenty of calm and pragmatic people in both parties, and plenty of irrational and emotionally unregulated ones, too. And that’s *despite* the increasing degree of emotion involved in our politics. The personalities and psychological profiles of the people in either party--including the 'swing' voters--are very diverse.
I subscribe to as many lefty sources as moderate and right. I live in a liberal state in a liberal college town. I have a filing cabinet of irrational positions, opinions, choices and actions from liberals that my conservative contacts power through to logical conclusions. My family is largely blue collar from the Midwest. This fact of left liberals owning weaker emotional regulation is constantly tested and proved. Rage drives Democrat politics. A lot of it female rage.
I think it is you in a bubble, not me.
I have not spewed any hatred. I don’t hate. Your projection of what I wrote as hate is a perfect example of unregulated emotions.
There are certainly some calm and pragmatic people, but few that call themselves Democrat these days.
Conclusions based off interactions with people in a single state in a single college town are conclusions forged in a bubble, especially if you approach people with a priori assumptions about who they are based on their partisan associations.
And making all Democrats analogous to insane wives who burn down houses and brainwash children is an example of hatred, so yes, you have indeed spewed some. That you can't see it suggests the lens you are using to view the world is making a whole lot of reasonable people in the ranks of the nation invisible.
On account of an itinerant life I've found liberal and centrist Democrats who have weathered political arguments without once losing their cool, and have perfectly amicable relationships with people who disagree with them politically, in, among other places, the suburbs and city centers of the Quad Cities and Philadelphia, Iowa farm country, rural Illinois, welding machinist firms in the Twin Cities, and the Montana mountain town in which one of my best buds has a beer practically every weekend with his father-in-law, where they poke fun at each other's diametrically opposed political opinions.
Among all these places, I've bumped into just as many Republicans and conservatives who are equally calm and civil--and I've bumped into a whole lot of both conservatives and liberals who lose their cool the moment someone disagrees with them. (And since the advent of social media I've seen the ranks of the latter groups increase, with the worst specimens being those who spend way too much time on social media, and get their views about the world and its people there.) But I don't make any assumptions about who people are when I learn their partisan/ideological affiliation--because if I did, I'd likely never befriend, or perceive, anyone who doesn't fit into the framework of those assumptions.
"And making all Democrats analogous to insane wives who burn down houses and brainwash children is an example of hatred,"
No, it is not.
You are one of those "words are violence" people.
To sit in judgment claiming I am in a bubble and hateful for pointing out the problem with the left and uncontrolled emotions by doing the very same you claim I am doing... well I will just add it to my growing pile of evidence.
Look at how much ink you wasted. What motivates you if not rage?
I am a CEO with a long corporate career with a Linked-in network of thousands of people that I know from all over the nation and world. I gave you an example of the college town, but my observations are significantly broad and deep and I seek the truth and to learn. I am a constant student. You don't get to my level of career success being in a bubble. Unlike you, I am never resistant to admitting when I am wrong. In this case you have failed to convince me that you have a strong enough understanding of the topics to justify wasting this much of your time. Your position should be one where you ask more questions that attempt to "teach" me. You are not the teacher, you are the student.
I'm merely pointing out several failures of reasoning and recommending a socially healthy means by which you might better remedy them. But perhaps it needs to be spelled out in more detail.
The first failure of reason lies in making broad categorical generalizations about a huge and diverse group of people (there are around 79 million registered Democrats in the United States) without any rigorous, systematic body of evidence to support said claim. Thus far you have provided no evidence of sufficient breadth to substantiate your proposition that these 49 million people are all "rage-driven and characterized by poorly regulated emotions," yet you continue to claim it is true. (I shouldn't have to tell you why one's LinkedIn network does not meet such an evidentiary standard, but I will spell it out for you if you insist)
The second failure of reason is the denial that making such a claim AND analogizing these people to a woman who kills her dog does not constitute an instance of expressing "extreme dislike or disgust" for said people, which is the definition of 'hatred'. (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hatred)
And the last failure of reason lies in not recognizing that these first two consequentially yield an act of self-refutation, in that you are attempting to argue a large group of people are hateful and irrational, but doing so using irrational arguments--while making hateful statements about them.
To remedy these misunderstandings on your part, I'm simply recommending making more Democratic friends in a wider variety of locations and contexts. And as a fellow CEO, I regret to inform you, we are no more immune from hermetically sealing ourselves inside social bubbles than anyone else. If you would like a list of examples of this phenomenon, I can provide them--but Google will furnish you with plenty on its own.
There are no failures in reason on my end, only your end.
First, a broad categorization is fine when talking about the common demonstrate behavior of defined group of people. There are always exceptions but the exceptions are not the rule. Republicans tend to oppose abortion but not all of them. However, it is fine to say "Republicans oppose abortion" because the majority poll as opposing abortion at some level.
Science confirmed that lack of emotional regulation is largely a female issue (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5937254/), and the Democrat party is nearly 60% female (https://news.gallup.com/poll/120839/women-likely-democrats-regardless-age.aspx) Democrats are clearly more likely to have emotional regulation problems.
Female rage over Dodd (https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/19/dobbs-2022-election-abortion-00074426) helped Democrat mitigate a red wave in the 2022 midterm elections. Anger, frustration and rage fuel all the protests and riots we have had... all left and Democrat. I comment on many left leaning Substacks and right-leaning Substacks where the emotional volume is much, much higher on the left Substacks. BlueSky is a place to easily set off an explosion of blue haired single cat lady freakout with a simple comment that challenges their woke belief.
You demonstrate the point here. You want to claim my analogy that the upset wife killed the family dog as "hate". It is laughable because there was no emotion at all backing my writing of that, but you had such a strong emotional reaction that you cannot control, that you blame me for causing you such turmoil by calling it hate.
When Democrats learn that emotions rule they can start winning. Policy discussions aren’t listened to except by elites. Gut issues determine elections.
All this bull crap aside, WHEN ARE DEMOCRATS GOING TO CONDEMN THE VIOLENCE AGAINST ICE AGENTS WHO ARE CARRYING OUT THE LAW. Whether you like it or not, ICE is doing their lawful job, masks on or masks off. Democrat Swawell on NewsNation with Cuomo wouldn't condemn the violence, but condemned ICE agents for wearing masks. What a jackass and he wants to run for president.
~ one tell that this Harvard paper is a perfect example of a partisan hit job is that they did not measure content for humor. Lefties are tone deaf when it comes to jokes & satire. And of, course, they can't meme. I call BS on methods, lack of depth, and obvious bias. ~
With the violence calls by progressives increasing everyday, when will the killing violence start? Do ICE agents now need over watch protection? I would say yes. Those days are coming. Making light of such threats have never lead the Dems to any logical or peaceful ending to anything. And they have never believed the words of those issuing them if morning line with everyone needs to live in a Democracy. We are well beyond Dem policies that will bring us together. They don’t have them and give no indication they are interested in any such thing. And we could say much the same of Republicans. Except they are no where near the hysterical violence scene like the Dems. But they are much better armed with more guys than Soros is giving his side.
Halpin’s call for a “stop-evaluate-wait and see” approach is admirable in theory, but difficult in practice.
Where, exactly, is the average voter supposed to find reliable, dispassionate information these days? In an era saturated with "alternative facts," conspiracy narratives, and emotionally charged propaganda from all sides, distinguishing real evidence from noise is no small feat.
Even when credible data is available, how many Americans possess the training—or see role models—necessary to weigh it effectively? Critical thinking is rarely modeled in our political culture, which rewards outrage over discernment and tribal loyalty over intellectual honesty.
The result is a feedback loop of emotional manipulation with very few exits.
Good point. My only suggestion would be to pick one reliable source of basic factual information and read it regularly. The Economist is my preferred one but there are others. Yes, the publication has an old school European "liberal" point of view, but the descriptive articles and analysis and data charts are unmatched.
Can't beat The Economist or its liberal POV,
It's the media and everyone is in a bubble. The worst part of the bubbles is what gets covered and what doesn't.