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Republican Emotional Flypaper – Allowing Anger, Outrage, and Frustration to Rule Your Life [1]
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Date: 2025-06-11
You can usually spot a Republican after just a short conversation. They often have a long list of things in their lives that frustrate and anger them. And most of these things like a bad back, a noisy neighbor, a frustrating job, or a quarrelsome family are not going away anytime soon.
One can even feel sympathy despite their sometimes abrasive personalities.
I have a brother who had a bad marriage for years where he and his wife irritated each other. He wanted to be dominant, and she usually successfully resisted his domination. He wished to be charismatic and admired but she had better social skills and took most of the positive attention.
He is thus a perfect candidate for being a staunch Republican (and he is one). His marriage provided the runway but now he flies in Republican skies where there is always another irritant, another complaint, another grievance on the horizon. It is a kind of addiction to be fixed on this horizon seeking the next story that motivates and validates one’s hatred, resentment, and victimhood.
Living a life of anger and disappointment makes people easy pickings for Republicans. Today’s Republicans generally have a long list of things about society and government that they dislike and resent.
It is easy for Republican media sources to take a mass of personal frustration and get people to transfer it to the world out there.
Frustration and anger are currently the BRAND of the Republican party.
Frustrated people are easy marks for a group headed by a con man who continually expresses outrage and makes promises that he almost never seems to keep - promises to fix that frustrating world out there.
No - “day one” did not bring an end to the wars in Israel or the Ukraine or stop incentives for buying EVs or bring “competence” back to the oval office or help US farmers avoid bankruptcy or lower prices on food or lower interest rates or fulfill a dozen other sometimes vague promises.
But none of those things mattered because the President was frustrated about almost everything just like his supporters. The promises were of little concern. It was the shared negative emotion that really mattered. That is why they voted for him.
He feels just like them about the world.
But unfortunately for these ulcer prone people, the Republican party’s goal was never to eliminate frustration but to maximize it to keep people voting Republican always hoping things will get better.
In fact the whole Republican media establish is designed to be an irritant and slowly torture the faithful while making things (increased inflation, lower taxes for the rich, increased cost of living, decreased government services, taking away healthcare and Social Security, giving Christians public tax monies, raising taxes on the poor and middle class, criminalizing women’s health, etc.) worse to keep followers on the hook.
But even when things get worse which is a good bet based on past Republican mismanagement of government and the economy, at least their followers do not feel alone. They can always share their mutual frustration and hatred of the “other side.”
Many Republicans are trapped like files on flypaper on a treadmill of frustration and victimhood, but at least they are part of a loosely knit club and have a shared identity.
Now everyone has some frustration and unhappiness in life. But there is a big difference between today’s Republicans and others.
These others do not allow anger and resentment to become their core identity and basic attitude towards life.
They do not think that getting rid of (arresting, deporting) and punishing (no more DEI) “those people” will solve their problems in life or make them feel better about their failures and limitations.
Republicans seem to be sure that punishing people who do not look like them is a magic formula that will fix almost any problem.
Irrational, nonsensical you might say. But based on recent events in LA, that seems to be their big plan.
Can those addicted to the outrage in Republican politics escape the treadmill and find a more productive and satisfying use of their time?
We will see in the coming mid-term elections if there is a turning point in slowing and reducing the appeal of the Republican media-generated roller-coaster of resentment and outrage.
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