Tribal Politics Teach People to Hate

In an age of ideological warfare, millions have been conditioned to see political opponents not as fellow Americans, but as moral monsters deserving contempt.

I guess I am too sensitive to some things.

Shocker, right?

It’s not that I can’t be difficult and quite frankly sometimes, an insufferable ass, but I am human after all and I have feelings, too. I know conservatives are not supposed to feel anything but hate, racism and fear of everybody not them, but that’s just a narrative-driven lie.

Something someone (cue Ilhan Omar) wrote has bothered me in a way that is surprising even to me. A statement was shared with me that a person I don’t know and have never met made, and it made me wonder why people hate others they don’t know, have never met, and whose actions have never directly impacted them.

I honestly don’t hate anyone. I feel strongly about things and about the actions and motivations of others because I believe some of those actions and motivations are deeply in error and have caused real harm to America and her citizens, but I can honestly say I just don’t have it in me to hate a person or an entire class of people. Usually, I do not care what random strangers think about me anyway.

Maybe it is just the stress of selling one house in Utah, buying another one in Tennessee, and moving across the country...again.

Here is what the subject person wrote in response to my post “Extreme Hakeem Says Things,” where I reported the increasingly open threats Democrats have felt free to express:

“Show me ONE example of comparable integrity from a party that continues to embrace some of the most vile and hateful people ever to hold office.”

Keep in mind that this was written after four years of the constant Democrat scalp-hunting of the first Trump term followed by gross and open weaponization of government during Biden’s single (thank God) term.

I found the assertion fascinating, particularly coming from a supporter of a political movement that has increasingly made common cause with Hamas sympathizers, excused riots and political violence, softened on criminals (including assassins like Tyler Robinson and Luigi Mangione), embraced open-border chaos, and tolerated an ugly strain of antisemitism so long as it is wrapped in the approved ideological packaging. The irony becomes even more striking when many of the left’s own historic icons, from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin D. Roosevelt to Fidel Castro, carried records ranging from overt racism to authoritarian brutality. Even segregationists like Robert Byrd and George Wallace came from the Democrat fold.

Yet somehow, modern progressives have convinced themselves they alone occupy the moral high ground.

What struck me most was not the insult itself. Conservatives have been called racists, fascists, Nazis, bigots and extremists for so long that it barely registers anymore. What bothered me was the casual certainty behind it all. The effortless assumption that millions of people the author has never met are hateful monsters unworthy of basic human grace. That kind of thinking does not emerge from wisdom or careful observation. It emerges from tribalism, indoctrination and emotional conditioning.

So, I began looking into what makes people believe false things about strangers so they can hate them with such confidence.

What I found is that human beings have an unfortunate tendency to turn other people into abstractions. It is much easier to hate a category than an actual human being. “MAGA extremist.” “Racist.” “Commie.” “Fascist.” “Colonizer.” “Christian nationalist.” Once the label is applied, the person underneath it ceases to matter. The label becomes the driver of a permission structure to dismiss, mock, fear or despise—and often in the most heinous and dishonest ways.

History is full of examples of societies convincing ordinary people that their neighbors were dangerous, immoral or subhuman. The frightening thing is not that this happens occasionally. The frightening thing is how naturally and repeatedly it happens. Most people who passionately hate conservatives have never meaningfully lived among conservatives. Likewise, many people on the right who despise progressives know them only as caricatures filtered through media and politics. In both cases, people end up hating avatars instead of human beings.

Modern politics thrives on this dynamic because outrage has become social currency. Hatred is no longer viewed as a moral failing so long as it is directed at the approved target. In fact, in many circles hatred is treated as evidence of enlightenment. The more viciously someone denounces the correct enemies, the more applause they receive from their ideological tribe. Social media amplified this pathology by rewarding emotional excess, certainty and cruelty while punishing nuance and restraint.

That is how people begin believing insane things about strangers. They start with the conclusion that a group is evil and then reinterpret every action through that lens. If conservatives are inherently hateful, then disagreement itself becomes hate speech. If Trump supporters are fascists, then weaponizing institutions against them becomes morally justified because people convince themselves they are “saving democracy.” Once hatred is moralized, almost anything can be rationalized.

That is the truly dangerous part. Not disagreement. Free societies require disagreement. What destroys republics is the abandonment of shared citizenship. Once political opponents cease to be fellow Americans and instead become existential enemies, censorship, political persecution, institutional weaponization and even violence begin to feel acceptable.

We have watched that process unfold in real time over the last decade.

Perhaps that is why the comment bothered me more than it should have. Not because a stranger insulted conservatives, but because it reflected something much darker in modern American life: a growing willingness to hate people not for what they have done, but for what they are presumed to be.

History suggests that societies traveling down that road rarely arrive anywhere good.

We are better than this—or at least I believe we are.