What is it about politics that makes people get so angry or passionate?

christenajenifer

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What is it about politics that makes people get so angry?
or passionate, in a non-horny sort of way.

I try to care, like other people do,
but almost everything in politics is so much bigger then me.
 
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We get aggressive when we feel threatened. We feel threatened when someone questions what we see as neccessary for our wellbeing, especially if we believe they have power in changing things around. Since we rely on society to be well we also believe society must be ordered a certain way for us to continue to be safe, else we are doomed. We feel threatened and anxious when exposed to those who disagree and want to change that order. Many of us even have doomsday scenarios in our mind what would happen if the opposing view ever takes power.

We also get agressive and emotional if we have made truth-statements a part of our identity because questioning those statements feels like a personal attack. People with a political or religious identity sore easily if exposed to other views or questioning. I believe that's called Ego Identity Bias.
 
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I think it's more the latter than the former. Political identities crystallize around issues, or sometimes around other identities. The two hot-button issues in Finland right now are immigration and nuclear power. The former is directly about identity, and the latter is *the* defining issue for one major part of the political spectrum -- the Greens started out as an anti-nuclear-power movement, and while they're enormously heterogenous otherwise, this is one thing that they're (near)unanimous about.

That means that when someone attacks your politics, it feels much the same as if he attacked your ethnicity, language, gender, nationality, religion, or any other building block of identity.

I don't think it's a coincidence that political rhetoric is the most heated in countries with long traditions of fixed and inherited political identity -- in the US, party affiliation is inherited about as strongly as religion, for example, which makes the schism between Republicans and Democrats as deep as the schism between Shi'ites and Sunnis in the Muslim world. France is very similar, although being a multi-party system, it's fragmented instead of polarized.
 
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I think it's about the harm I've witnessed based on ignorance, and the harm I know I will witness in the future.
 
To somewhat echo Prime J, there's a reason for the old saying "Never discuss politics or religion in polite company." I think the two are very similar in how people hold them in regard, and as already said, seem compelled to make them a cornerstone of their identity. It's almost as impossible for an adherent of one political party to admit the other might have a point as it is for a fundamentalist evolutionist to admit that Darwin had some grounds for his position.

I hadn't really realized how similar the two are until lately, when I noticed the occasional very obvious political bias coming out in myself. As a confirmed atheist, I have to feel it's at *least* as silly to invest a man-made political ideal with ultimate truth as it is a religious dogma. I therefore try very hard to be impartial and open to ideas, but there is a basic emotional element that seems to be rooted in an absolute ethical sense of what's right or wrong involved. Very difficult. :S

Edit: BTW, welcome to the forum.
Edit2: Or not, if you're a spambot.
 
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I'd say you're making a false assumption. Yes, people get irritable about politics, but that's certainly not the end-all-be-all touchstone. Want to see someone really get pissed off? Explain to them why the music they like sucks rocks. Seriously, if there's someone that you want to hate you for all time, go tell him at length that his favorite song is total crap.
 
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I'd say you're making a false assumption. Yes, people get irritable about politics, but that's certainly not the end-all-be-all touchstone. Want to see someone really get pissed off? Explain to them why the music they like sucks rocks. Seriously, if there's someone that you want to hate you for all time, go tell him at length that his favorite song is total crap.

Sometimes one read something that is beyond stupid, beyond any rational coherent thought, so zombiefying insane that one simply need a few moments to drag oneself back to consciousness after one experienced the fabric of time and space itself warp around ones brain and suck all life out from it. You sir, just took the grand price. Despite the amount of sentences you used to compile what you might have believed to be a reasonable post one could scan it with modern top-notch hightech equipment for days and still not be able to find anything close to what could be claimed as signs of intelligence or anything human for that matter. Every unfortunate victim who read this will go from it with a mind so shattered from being exposed to it that they will be scarred for life. That, is all your fault. May god himself forgive you for this vile act of pure evil.
 
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Actually, I was going to agree with dte—for I remember how hurt, upset and offended I got when he had the nerve to pan my favorite song.
I'm Going to Hire a Wino
 
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Sometimes one read something that is beyond stupid, beyond any rational coherent thought, so zombiefying insane that one simply need a few moments to drag oneself back to consciousness after one experienced the fabric of time and space itself warp around ones brain and suck all life out from it. You sir, just took the grand price. Despite the amount of sentences you used to compile what you might have believed to be a reasonable post one could scan it with modern top-notch hightech equipment for days and still not be able to find anything close to what could be claimed as signs of intelligence or anything human for that matter. Every unfortunate victim who read this will go from it with a mind so shattered from being exposed to it that they will be scarred for life. That, is all your fault. May god himself forgive you for this vile act of pure evil.
Opinion noted and compliment graciously accepted. BTW, your favorite song sucks donkey dicks. Trite, boring, and demonstrates a complete lack of talent.
 
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Now don't get personal children!! :)
 
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