Anger is vital to understanding contemporary politics as is an ethics based on group loyalty and out-group hatred. Current politics shows something about the ways that humans engage in social self-deception through group bonding. Perhaps as a solution we need some kind of revitalised classical Skepticism.
Non-social media is possibly the origins of this ‘syndrome’ of group bonding and ethical anger, in particular that mainstream media which belongs to Rupert Murdoch, such as Fox, but it has spread to most commercial social media and news sites.
The original idea seems to have been that if you made viewers morally angry, then they would feel engaged and stay tuned. Similarly if you cast doubt on every other form of media, by implying those media were immoral, then you could further enforce loyalty to the anger makers, and stop viewers from gaining any information which might lead them to suspect that ‘their’ news was not entirely accurate.
So it began as a marketing tool, which became a political tool, and got transferred elsewhere to keep other forms of media functional and profitable. And now we have a completely crazy political process in which the created ‘sides’ cannot talk to each other, have no sketicipsm about what they are told, and what used to be mainstream politics is completely marginalised.
We even find the situation where after 30 years of abuse directed by ‘their’ media, politicians and celebrities towards ‘progressives’, self-proclaimed ‘conservatives’ wonder why those ‘progressives’ are now rude towards them. The rudeness they operated within, became part of the air they breathed and part of their identity and was rarely if ever perceived, or commented upon. Creating an out-group seems to have been part of the way people were encouraged to behave.
Donald Trump seems to be a master manipulator of this syndrome. Now Trump’ political leanings are not random; they generally seem directed at benefiting some parts of the established corporate class. He has given corporations more rights to poison people and the environment for example, and actively fought to suppress information about Climate Change, removing it from relevant Government websites. However this factor about his politics is obscured by the now disguising categories of ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal/progressive’.
While Trump is not remotely conservative, neither is he liberal. He primarily seems interested in destroying any checks and balances which might inhibit his power and action. We might characterise him, more usefully, as a vandal.
However, because he is categorised as Republican, people who categorise themselves as conservative generally do not see this; they tend to see him as one of them, or as someone they should be loyal to, or support rather than support “the other side” (at least this is my experience listening to people). This process is helped by his incoherent speeches in which he refuses to lay out any policies other than he is great, everyone is doing great and people who oppose him are part of a vast evil conspiracy, and should never be listened to or engaged with. It is easy for ‘followers’ to get worked up and angry with non-Trump supporters, and assume that Trump is for whatever they want. The speeches may have a hypnotic quality as they constantly disrupt expectations of linear sense making narrative, but keep coming back to how great he is, and how great he is doing… etc.
As part of his rhetoric, Trump appears to encourage the worst form of identity politics (as previously discussed on this blog), in which his followers are defined as morally superior, with the right to stop everyone else from participating in politics or from speaking – they are totally righteous, everyone else is wrong and wrong headed. They have the right to hate. This could be predicted to reinforce the lack of skepticism in his followers and the adherence to dogma.
Educated people were generally too much in their own bubbles to see that Trump was a danger, or even likely to succeed, and contributed to his success by arrogantly abusing people who supported him, while forgetting the media environment they operated in, in which this arrogance would further confirm Trump supporter’s loyalties.
In terms of Clasical Pyrrhonism people are being encouraged to abandon a skeptical position and quietude, in order to get worked up and believe that their dogmas are in place and working. Eventually the current process will end in the total fragmentation of society, and its disruption. The way that ‘the right’ has attempted to impose its corporate plutocracy, will eventually bring that plutocracy and way of life crashing down in ecological catastrophe.
The opponents of Trump may find it useful not to feed into the binary hatred, but to transcend it with gestures of openness… I’m not sure.
Climate, technology and chaos Blog 
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