2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: I don't buy into the "Americans are angry" bullshit. [View all]Music Man
(1,184 posts)I think a measured statement is that Americans are anxious. Wages have remained the same for decades while the cost of living has gone up. We stress about rent, tuition, loans, phone bills, car payments, childcare, and medical bills. And when a person, for instance, leaves a doctor's office facing a bill that will takes a hit out of one's bank account, I truly don't think the emotion we feel is anger but anxiety.
Science has shown that when anxiety increases, empathy decreases. And as empathy decreases, humans have a propensity to enter into conservative thought. The brain goes into survival mode.
Trump and company take legitimate anxiety and translate it into fear, because it's a hell of a lot easier to say, "Mexicans are stealing our jobs" than objectively discuss the core patterns in economics. The anger is engineered, and besides being politically unhelpful, it's mentally unhealthy.