Orange is the New Black...and Outrage is the New Politics?

In recent years, outrageous political opinion has begun to completely take over as the new prominent form of political news. Why? Why is this crazed screaming and shouting between anywhere from an expert to an average Joe with that has associated his or herself with a political party surpassed conventional news commentary. The answer is fear and anxiety. These two emotions have begun to boil over and thus lead to outrageous reactions from all areas of the political spectrum. In order to change with the times, newscasters have adopted a variety of rhetorical tools in order to take advantage of these emotions of fear and anxiety that have lead to the explosion of outrageous political opinion and to heighten anxiety and affect intimacy. One of these tools is the mere concept of volume. Nowadays, people appearing on a variety of politically opinionated shows are yelling, getting louder and louder, and eventually screaming out their beliefs and their rejections of other beliefs that reach people more than monotonous tones and lead to anxiety when the particular person is yelling about impending doom brought about by their opposing politics. Audiences tune into these screaming matches between politics because they are hungry for venom and righteousness. Why is that hunger present? That is the case probably because of the vast gap that exists between political parties. These tremendous and insurmountable differences between Republicans and Democrats, Conservatives and Liberals, etc. are what lead people to want to be told that they are the ones in the right party, the party with the correct view on politics, the party that will shape the future for the better, and they also want to see their opponents put down and sharply criticized for trying to go against their beliefs that are "right". These thresholds for anxiety and needs for intimacy could very well be rooted in the very biology of humans and not merely be a matter of nurturing and development. Many factors contributed to the rise of political outrage, such as sweeping deregulation, technological changes, and the exploding universe of citizen advocacy. Sweeping deregulation allows those people with strong political opinions and the desire to share their political with the world to have more freedom to express their outrage in the way that they desire rather than being confined and restricted to lower, less convincing levels of opinionated arguing, debating, and proclaiming. Technological changes also has provided those outraged Americans out there with more opportunities to share their opinions with people and more outlets for their outrage through a variety of ways. This includes but is not limited to: the television, the Internet, and the radio. The exploding universe of citizen advocacy also allows regular citizens rather than political experts to publicly express their outrage and better connect with viewers in that they are watching people like themselves that they can relate to. Festinger's hypothesis regarding psychological comfort, premature closure, and avoidance of dissonance all serve to explain the reason behind the rise of outrage-based political commentary. Humans have a nature inclined towards associating with people that have beliefs similar to their own, and humans thus tend to prefer to avoid interactions with political opponents that may lead to discomfort and the uncovering of harsh realities. Most people would rather watch fellow members of their party scream for five minutes about the opinions the viewer and commentator hold in common even if the person preaching their political beliefs are uninformed rather than listen to a well-informed opponent tell them something that is the opposite of their beliefs because it lacks self-reassurance (which most if not all people desire) and instead enforces the acceptance of painful truths (which leads to much psychological discomfort). One can only hope that this rise of outrage-based political commentary will not leave many in the dark.