Partisan Feedback

Differences in the Responses Between Democrats and Republicans

I’ve been writing PurpleAmerica for 2 1/2 years now and it’s been an interesting ride. Substack provides me an opportunity to provide longer form content than Twitter/X or other boards do, and allows for more nuance than the three sentence character limited simplistic, polemic commentary experienced elsewhere. I didn’t know at the time how long I’d do this, nor whether anyone would listen, but it’s grown steadily since then and we’ve developed a nice community of middle-of-the-road thinkers that make it worthwhile. On a few occassions I thought about trashing the whole thing only to be surprised when some writing of mine I didn’t think would do much gets thousands of hits and strikes a chord, or I receive a genuine appreication of thanks from one of my readers. People seem to be entertained enough to spend 3-5 minutes of their day reading the content, which is why I continue to do it (for free). I usually write something at the end of the day, spend maybe 30-60 minutes on it, set to publish the following morning. I don’t put that much time into editing it unless I see some egregious errors, usually after publication. It’s not like I’m writing War and Peace here.

But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been a learning experience neither. I’m not unbiased, but I do find a lot of things to gripe about with both sides. Most the time it comes from shit the smartest writers’ room in Hollywood couldn’t make up if they tried. But one of the more interesting things I’ve noticed since I started doing this is how people on each side of the political aisle provide feedback, through the comments and emails. It’s genuinely fascinating to me. One of my friends who sometimes contributes, “Robot Jim” used to love to read some of the more psychotic responses I’d get so much that I made it a feature of some of my Friday Weekly Recap posts.

When I started, I was told by a lot of people “Don’t Read the Comments.” This is an adage that goes back to Twitter too. I find that kind of dumb— if you don’t care what your audience says, why are you writing? Now, I DO subscribe to the Tom Nichols approach to muting and blocking though, which in a nutshell is that if you read a comment and can tell immediately that you’ll never have a good conversation with this person ever, be liberal with the mute and block features. With every post there are always trolls out there just wanting to bait you into stupid arguments and others who are always focused on the “ratio” of likes to comments (which actually, tells you nothing—the biggest ratio I had was one where two people got into an argument on my comment board; I muted both of them). The Nichols Rule nugget has wisdom that has saved my sanity on more than one occassion.

In actually reading the feedback, I’ve come to a very clear conclusion; the manner in which Democrats/Liberals and Republicans/Conservatives respond demonstrates some of their worst habits and exemplifies why a lot of people on each side of the divide hate the other. It’s self-evident really. Even comic. Let’s go through some of them.

Republican/Conservative Feedback

• Before we get too far down, I have to comment on the outrageous degree of racism, homophobia, anti-semitism and sexism in conservative responses.¹ It’s one thing to talk critically about these issues and how they’re addressed; there may even be a valid point in them. It’s another thing entirely to go out of your way to respond with an email saying “LET’S KILL ALL THE FAGS” or “FUCK ZIONISM” (which was one of the lesser offensive things I read in that particular email, complete with swastikas and Holocaust images²³) as I have received on some occasssions when tangentially talking about LGBTQIA+ and Israel/Gaza issues. To those people, you’re fucking nuts and need help. Call a psychiatrist immediately.

• I’d say about three-quarters of the responses I get from Conservatives contain some form of whataboutism. It’s the single biggest ingredient to anything they have to say.⁴ If I say something ill about Trump, I’ll hear something “What about Biden?” If I say something about how corruption is bad, I get “What about Pelosi?” What about it? Surely you can see what is being said applies to them too.

• It happens on both sides depending on the issue, but most of the real crackpot ones in ALL CAPS tend to come from the right.

• The most self contradictory ones come from the right.

• The ones where it’s always “someone else’s” fault and you point out other people that encompasses that group only to respond “OH, I’m not talking about THEM, Trump won’t do anything to THOSE people.” Yeah, they kind of lack an understanding of what words mean and make self-imposed assumptions that don’t apply.

• This also happens with both sides, but many of the meanest/dumbest responses all come from names with “random name/string of digits with less than 10 subscribers” and are usually from the right, I’d say about 80/20. I don’t even bother responding to them, I just block outright.⁵

• The insanity offered is usually in direct proportion to the number of misspelled words. And I don’t mean uncommon words or typoes, I mean like five and six letter words that any fifth grader can spell are wrong (e.g., “pensil”). There’s also a lot more malapropisms, misspeak and contextual “WTF”s in right wing responses.

• I get more recycled “Repost, resend and retweet” content from the right. I don’t even open, I can tell from the subject line that it isn’t worth the effort.

• Lastly, the least substantive responses, that is the ones that are utterly lacking in any kind of fact, intellect or defensibility, almost always come from the right.

Democrat/Liberal Feedback

Unsurprisingly, the liberal responses are 180 degrees in the opposite from the right. Not just in content, but in HOW the responses are made.

• “You forgot…”, “You omitted…”, “You didn’t include…” “You got wrong…” responses. I’m not writing a book here, people. Yes, substack allows me to include more thought and commentary into the posts than comment boards and social media; that doesn’t mean I want to spend every minute of every waking day writing a ten page in depth detailed essay just to cover your one variable that is actually irrelevant to the outcome.

• “So are you saying…” No. I’m not. If I were saying what you were thinking and taking to the most ridiculous degree, I would have said it. See comment above.

• Pedantry. A lot of it. Grammar nazis are almost uniformly from the left. I hate grammar nazis. ⁶

• The manifesto writers. OK. Here’s a good tip— if what you are writing in the comments or in an email is LONGER than the original post itself, you’re doing it wrong. Seriously. These philosophical practitioners of sophistry love to hear themselves expound on the intrinsic nature of everything, and how their view of the world is the only correct one. Manifesto, meet mute button.

• The overly sensitive. One could author something in which 99% of it is something they agree with, but the more liberal readers love to find that 1% they disagree with (which sometimes is just using the wrong pronoun—no joke) and feel the need to dump on me and provide a lectured discourse on the issue generally. This one is much more definitive of the more liberal side of the aisle; people who express a genuine need to respond to the most trivial of throwaway words as if it’s the single greatest issue in the history of democracy.

• Only liberals seem to put citations in their posts. They’ll cite shows on MSNBC, literature (they overdo it with Orwell, often doing it poorly), philosophers and politicians to try and make their point. They forget what they are doing is providing feedback on a comment board or email, not writing a legal brief or college essay.

• An utter lack of humor. Sure, they can offer some great barbs and one liners, but far too many of them feel the need to interject too much seriousness into otherwise humorous content. They would be nicer if they weren’t so damn serious all the time.

• People think that conservatives are the doom and gloom types, but most of what I receive are liberal apocalyptic visions. “If this event happens, its FASCISM!” “If this other thing happens, ITS THE END OF DEMOCRACY!” “HITLER WALKS AMONG US!!!!” This kind of rhetoric was popular during the Tea Party era on the right, and it’s shifted to the left with many of the never Trumpers (former Tea Partiers, like Joe Walsh) who understand it’s motivating impact. It wasn’t true then, it’s not true now (but that doesn’t mean to stop being vigilant about many things Trump does that are flat out wrong). ⁷

• Lastly, and this follows from the above, there are a lot more expressions of shame and pessimism towards America from the left. It’s hard for me to get into or agree with those arguments at all. The way to change America for the better is to play up the attributes that make America great, not pout and whine about how you want to move to Canada now or how the stars and stripes want to make you puke.

I tend to find it all amusing. But if there is one thing that always makes my day, it’s reading in the comments a well thought out, nice, brief response. Whether you liked what I wrote or didn’t. Whether you thought something neeeded more attention or should have been reconsidered. Whether you have an idea for a topic I should write about next. Whether I inspired you in some way (these are my all time faves). Whether something changed your opinion or you opened your mind to alternative views.

Because that is why I do this, and it makes all the other stuff worthwhile to endure. :)

PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day

It’s Friday. Enjoy the weekend!

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject

I’m turning the final word over to you. Put your feedback in the comments on what you tend to see, not just here but elsewhere online as well.

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Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. When liberals look at the right and say to moderates “So you’re siding with Nazis, Homophobes, Racists…” this is primarily the source. I do need to express that the volume of these types are a small subset of people on the right that are just outrageous and excessively vocal. Nonetheless, they’re out there— and I see it and am disgusted by them.

2. The sheer level and degree of anti-semitism out there astounds me. There doesn’t seem to be a middle ground either. I have no problem with criticizing Israeli policy towards the Palestinians and Netanyahu’s government generally, but that is a far cry in degree to being pro-HAMAS or Pro-Nazi. Yet more and more I see more rhetoric geared toward the latter and not the former. It genuinely worries me where that discussion is headed.

3. And as if to underscore where that email was going/praising, it made a pretty explicit point in favor of Elon Musk’s “Nazi salute” and the rise of the aFD in Germany.

4. It’s also a core tenet of their logic. They tend to define themselves by being the opposite of what they dislike, so its important for them to defend themselves with pointing out what they don’t like of the other side when attacked. It’s also a huge reason that they tend to be more cult like instead of rational.

5. Many of these tend to be bots, and it’s just simply not worth engaging in any way.

6. Mostly because they just pick on my lack of editing effort instead of just getting the gist of what is being said and moving on. Yes, I could spend another hour editing shit, I don’t have time mostly.

7. To be sure, a lot of this is just because Republicans are in charge and Democrats, without any levers of power, are powerless. The Tea Party sprang up in the exact opposite situation, with Democrats holding all the levers (including 60 seats in the Senate) and Republicans in the political wilderness.