People’s political opinions do not make them instantly or inherently evil. Ridiculing or insulting people does absolutely zero good. Period. When have you ever changed your mind in regards to your behaviour or thoughts directly after being shamed, or condescended? No one responds well to this sort of criticism. It causes us to double down on our opinions and defend them at all costs. But, from the perspective of news media outlets; ridicule, insult, and slander are incredibly powerful tools. They make our ears prick up when we see inflammatory and aggressive; “click-bait” headlines and they get us all worked up, ready to interrogate whatever we find in the article we click on. It’s what a lot of new journalists want. They want to create a fight. Don’t let them. It’s only harming the potential for real dialogue between the political left and right in America.

As Jonathan Haidt so eloquently points out in his work: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Religion and Politics; we are simple creatures with moral preferences that inform our politics post-hoc. We have a series of moral tastebuds that seek to inform our emotional reaction to certain information. It’s not that conservatives who don’t support certain types immigration programs are “evil”, they merely have a different moral preference that informs their political viewpoints. They more often than not have incredibly good empirical reasoning for their viewpoints, we just misunderstand them because we seek to talk over one another. It’s not that all conservatives who don’t support “diversity” movements are bigoted, racist xenophobes; they simply see that the world functions in a very different way than we may presumptively think it does. Try to approach every conversation you have from a place of ignorance and you will soon realise that people you disagree with have a lot to offer. Even if it’s uncomfortable to begin with.



Political conservatives come from an enormous variety of social backgrounds, yet the liberal-left seeks to paint a very distinct condescending portrait of Trump and the Trump voter.

And it’s dangerous.

It’s dangerous because whenever we seek to de-humanise our “opposition” we instantly lose. It happens so consistently from liberals who view themselves as “rational” and “tolerant” when quite often they are the furthest thing from it.

There are reasons that conservatives in the United States feel the way that they do. One of the fundamental reasons that Donald Trump managed to manhandle the electoral college and clinch victory in the 2016 election was in the way he utilised votes from the working class in the rural Midwest and Pennsylvania, whilst Clinton seemed to take the Upper-Midwest for granted, with all economic policy and campaigning being notably absent from Wisconsin, foolishly believing that she could hitchhike off Obama’s former reputation in the “blue-state”.

The manufacturing heartland colloquially called the “rust-belt” was already leaning Republican, Trump’s campaigning tactics just managed to tip the scales in his favour. The new condescending liberal-left so obviously represented by the Democrats had forgotten the plight of hundreds of thousands of working Americans, and instead focused on purporting a bourgeoisie campaign of buzzword oriented focus such as: diversity, inclusion, tolerance and acceptance in a political climate where hundreds of thousands of Americans were already suffering from widespread unemployment, technical poverty, and genuine socioeconomic hardship. Not only did the Democrats forget about them. They were actively belittled in the Clinton campaign. And so, when Trump arrived and gave voice to their woes, no matter how volatile his incendiary accusations at the establishment were. People listened. These people are not “stupid”, they are coming from a place of genuine hardship, of genuine economic disparity: with some post-industrial townships reporting over 30% unemployment and yet they were laughed at by the Democrats with Hillary Clinton herself declaring that: over half of these people should be thrown into:“the basket of deplorables”.



This is why I ask that you don’t give your time to incendiary articles and that you don’t reflexively click on videos and memes that seek to ridicule and despise anyone: Left or Right. Instead, I plea that you direct your attention towards methods of real political engagement, and that you seek to unite and care for those in positions of hardship, no matter how foreign their moral disposition may be. There are many ways to stand up for yourself and assist strong political movement that doesn’t immediately disparage and defame your “opposition”.

Ultimately, it is up to each individual to support ways of political dialogue that seek to offer real solutions, rather than consistent temper tantrums curated by technological giants that work against us. I have written another piece HERE that outlines some tools that we can use to help recognise and change our biases and behaviour on the internet. Ridicule and slander help no one. Ever. So it’s up to you to make political dialogue great again.

Thomas Mitchelhill

|Philosopher

|Political Analyst

|Existence Enthusiast

Linkedin