Reply #61: Not entirely a myth.

[boppers]

It's more an issue of parsing and mental process.

Let's take, oh, the meme of running through a gauntlet of snipers as an example.

To somebody who deeply supports Hillary, every mention of it, every side comment, feels like a swipe, an attack, an effort to "bring Hillary down". It's not "rational" to inject it into every few conversations, so the motive "must be irrational". In a polarized mind, if the motive is not "love", it must be "hatred".

Basically, it's the problem of thinking in polarized terms. Hillary herself referred to the VRWC, assuming that every blogger, every listserv pundit, indeed, the whole force of the internet was either with her, or against her.

Part of it is generational and regional. Boomers (and those before them) were often raised in a world of good/bad, black/white, freedom/fascism, and this perspective tends to color their thinking, their decision making, their world view. There is right, and not-quite-as-right, which then gets called "wrong".

Post-polarized people have grown up differently, and think differently. Opposition is not an enemy, it's something cool and interesting. Dissent is not to be feared or controlled, but embraced.

To summarize succinctly: "Irrational Hatred" is the result of polarized people dealing with those who think grey, rather than black or white, is a valid color. Alternately, there's still a lot of folks fighting over whether their black/white color is better than the other.




tpyo