Letters from your neighbour: fear equals vitriol
Finegan Eagle
The vitriol has grown towards politicians in recent years. Why? Well, here are a few reasons:
• People’s distrust of the establishment
• The protest movement within the two extremes of political parties
• Democratic Party Rhetoric and Propaganda
• Republican Party Rhetoric and Propaganda
• Media silos
• Inability to compromise
• The asymmetrical moralism of politics
• The experience of dynastic powers in political culture
• The removal of the guards that existed in the 20th century
• The adoption of anarchy as a political state
• Post-modernist concepts within the Democratic Party structure
• The chronic dystopian vision of the future
• Experience only political polarities
• Religiosity in left-wing politics
• Political realignment of voters
• The existence of social media
• The anti-intellectual movement within the Republican Party
• The hypocrisy of the policies of the democratic parties
• Reluctance to understand science, or simply disavowal of science as a whole
• Futurism as reality
• The pandemic
• Loss of respective expertise
• Loss of respective authority
• Reluctance to recognize the consequences of policies, good, bad or indifferent
• The chronic narcissism within our population as well as the political culture
• The perception of economic disparity
• Culture Wars
• The change of discourse in the language of politics
• The feeling that the government is not listening or responding
• Devaluing the public service by using the word “employment”
• Fear
I will discuss these issues in later columns.
All of these ideas combined threaten each other and create vitriol in the political culture we know today. It’s not new, just different. This happened in 1829 with the realignment of political parties and the election of Andrew Jackson; in the 1860s with the Civil War; in the 1930s with the Depression; and in the 1960s with civil rights and anti-war movements. What the above dates have in common is a tired, anxious and angry population.
It is not our existential threat; it is a small accumulation of cultural, political, psychological and economic factors. We are in the midst of a great change in the way we communicate and the way we obtain information, as well as the psychological factors that come with the aforementioned reasons. Everyone has agency (a top-down power structure) in America, and I don’t think either side recognizes that. What goes hand in hand with anxiety and anger is the concept of emotional collectivism. It is our existential threat. We can only improve the world through individual action, not through group action or governmental force.
Humans are slow to change, and change breeds fear. And fear breeds vitriol and chaos.
Truly.
Your neighbour, Ian O’Hara
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