the 10 rules of hate:
1. THERE ARE ONLY TWO IDEAS – Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative. Boolean political identities.
2. THE TWO IDEAS ARE IN PERMANENT CONFLICT
3. HATE PEOPLE, NOT INSTITUTIONS
4. EVERYTHING IS SOMEONE ELSE’S FAULT (“The overwhelming majority of “controversial news stories” involve simple partisan narratives cleaved quickly into hot-button talking points. Go any deeper and you zoom off the flow chart”).
5. NOTHING IS EVERYONE’S FAULT (“If both parties have an equal or near-equal hand in causing a social problem, we typically don’t cover it.”)
6. ROOT, DON’T THINK (“By the early 2000s, TV stations had learned to cover politics exactly as they covered sports, a proven profitable format. The presidential election especially was reconfigured into a sports coverage saga.”)
7. NO SWITCHING TEAMS (“Being out of touch with what the other side is thinking is now no longer seen as a fault. It’s a requirement.”)
8. THE OTHER SIDE IS LITERALLY HITLER
9. IN THE FIGHT AGAINST HITLER, EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED. (“If the other side is literally Hitler, this eventually has to happen. It would be illogical to argue anything else. What began as America vs. America will eventually move to Traitor vs. Traitor, and the show does not work if those contestants are not offended to the point of wanting to kill one another.”)
10. FEEL SUPERIOR. (“We’re mainly in the business of stroking audiences. We want them coming back. Anger is part of the rhetorical promise, but so are feelings righteousness and superiority.”)
