Why Do Republicans Hate Everyone?

In fairness, the question should be: Why does the extreme right-wing hate everybody? The majority of republicans are just as friendly as your average floundering democrat. In reality-tv-obsessed America, however, the people who yell the loudest and say the most outlandish things are those who make the news – and get elected President.

With that in mind, we can still generally answer the question: Why do republicans seem to hate everybody?

Lesson one: look to history. There are countless periods in political history in which we find anger-driven uprisings against “all things other” by the right-wing. Every time the economy swung in favor of the wealthy and against the average worker, the right-wing increased its political power by blaming “The Other”: Irish, Italians, African Americans, Chinese, Japanese, even alcohol. Today that blame is targeted at Mexico and “predominantly Muslim nations”.

Same problems, different scapegoats. Assigning blame is the easiest way out of complex situations – especially for the simple-minded. Assigning blame is also the shortest path to a culture of hate.

Republican rallies are one part mob and one part recruiting event. Why? Because human beings get caught up in chants (we love a good rhythm). Chanting increases emotion for a politician just as much as it does at a football team. In the 2016 election, the chanting mobs made the republican party “the home team” and everyone else in the country their long-time rivals (yes, we are that simple – we’re only animals). If people chant “BUILD THAT WALL!” enough times and with enough vigor, they’ll get so riled up that they’ll want to rush the field and build it themselves…. or at least sucker punch a few people.

Like chanting, hate is a infectious. It spreads like a cancer and a wave in a stadium. As a result of decades of fear-mongering on right-wing media combined with GOP election strategies of encouraging blame and disgust of the opposition, hate has become a permanent motivator in republican brain function.

The die-hard GOP base is terrified that the world is on the brink of destruction… because that’s what they’re told every day online, on airwaves, and too often in the pulpit. Far-right republicans have been taught that people are inherently bad – call it a twisted exploitation of believing in original sin – and so distrust everything: politicians, media, even their next door neighbor. “Republicans work hard and democrats are lazy.” can be heard every day in red state cafes across the country. It’s what they’ve been taught – we can never forget that.

One of the biggest mistakes we make is assuming we are smarter than our own brains. A person can be told anything enough times and it becomes a fact in the human mind. Combine that susceptibility with the monetization of Republicanism, and keeping the republican base angry is a very lucrative business (just ask Newt). Republican hate mongering sells everything from TV commercials and children’s books, to guns and security systems. Maintaining hate within the republican base is the GOP’s business model.

Which Came First: Republican Hate, or GOP Misinformation?

Hate is a great motivator. All political parties have used it to get out the vote. Generally, those who seek elected office shape information in a way that helps a certain voting block “hate” their opponent. That’s how we elect people in America. That is a sad reality we just have to accept in order to fix it. “Hope” doesn’t fix it.

What’s unique and new about negative politics in the post-Obama era is that we have this thing called the Internet and… dare I acknowledge it… “Social Media”.  Social media has completely isolated the Republican Party base. The Internet and social media have created hard-edged, isolated buckets of information where facts don’t matter… agreement and emotion matter. For republicans, agreement with their own bias is considered fact, whereas disagreement is a lie – they literally transform reality to support their own opinion: the Post-Truth Era. In order to maintain that alternate reality, they have to hate those who don’t agree, otherwise their reality bubble starts to break apart.

This is the case on both sides of the aisle, but the hardliners have taken it to a new level, which is why they seem to hate everything. They’re even taught to hate things that help them like the ACA, unions, and public education.

This process started with simple misinformation used to win elections. We’re all accustomed to managing that in our own psyche, but once it transferred online into right-wing blogs, online broadcasts, and right-wing TV channels – that’s when the snake started eating its own tale.

Social media and 1000 cable channels don’t increase the information we receive – they focus the information – and repeat it 1000 times more often. Anything can become “the truth” when its repeated enough times.

Social media doesn’t introduce us to more people, it introduces us to more people who think exactly the same way we do. It increases the message intensity while simultaneously decreasing diversity in our lives.

That defines the Tea Party and extreme right-wing: a social media group that has built itself the most powerful online echo chamber in history. With every passing year the social media circles become more and more intense, with less and less diversity. There are greater numbers of people online, but the information circles don’t overlap, which results in even more isolation than if social media didn’t exist in the first place.

As such, people are free to blame and bastardizing anyone who dares contradict their worldview without being challenged. We can easily verify the diversity argument because of the purification efforts: eliminate establishment republicans in primary elections. The Tea Party and alt-right want to get rid of anyone who “is not conservative enough”. Politicians who 7-8 years ago were considered conservative, in the eyes of the Tea Party, are now too liberal! It’s amazing (and scary) to watch: they become more and more intense, and less and less diverse. All because the manner in which they interact with one another totally rejects outside opinion.

Republicans hate everyone because that’s what they’ve being taught, and that’s what they need to keep the walls of Republicanland standing. Hate, fear, and distrust make the mortar of the GOP’s house of cards.

If they don’t hate, the unified GOP house falls down.