Walter Kirn Quotes

They are the hate group. The Democrat Party, that's their fuel. That's what energizes them is their hate. And for them to sit here and act like they're the most compassionate and tolerant and peaceful and understanding is just a bunch of hogwash. The American people that voted for Donald Trump are hated. The Republican Party is hated. The alternative conservative media is hated.

I'm a hater. Part of the tribalness of politics is to really dislike the other side with intensity. And the more I see of them the more I hate them. I hate their negativity. I hate their narrowness

I catch as much hell from the hard-core conservative people as I do the far left. The only difference is that the far right don't bring the hate to the table that the far left does. And that's my party. They just deal in so much hate. I mean the far left, not the Democrats, the far left really deal in hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.

The Democrats, the left have become a giant hate group. There is no reason in these people. This is pure, 100 percent corrupt, evil politics, or worse, that governs their thinking, their day-to-day thinking. If they're having an outdoor barbecue - wait. They wouldn't. That's climate change causing. Whatever these people do.

Each side had its uninformed fanatics. And each side had political leaders who fanned the flames with their rhetoric.

People are so quick to demonize and stereotype those on the other side that they often say that it's impossible to work with people on the other side.

I'm not a Republican, but I have some conservative views on certain things. I'm not a Democrat, either. It's just very difficult that these people hate each other over a belief. I think it all comes down to ego and competitiveness.

The stupidity of tribalism has made politics primarily about partisan identities, not persuasion or policy. The screamers on the right and left fuel one another. In a nation as big as ours, there is always someone somewhere saying something stupid—but tribalism takes this fact as its lifeblood. And it’s the excuse for otherwise civic-minded Americans to ignore the nuts in their own party and obsess only over the nuts in the other party. We’re tempted to think that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It takes a genuine leader to remind us that most of the time, the enemy of our enemy is still a jackass.

Sides are being divided now. It's very obvious. So if you're on the other side of the fence, you're suddenly anti-American. It's breeding fear of being on the wrong side.

I mean, look, we're living in a country where you can't have a non-denominational response. If you're slightly critical of either party, all of the partisans jump on you like you're a lunatic.

At root, the Tea Party is nothing more than a them-versus-us thing.

I'm not, nor is anybody I know in government part of a nasty right wing clique.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

We can't allow ourselves to descend down the rabbit hole of unbridled partisanship for partisan sake.

It's very personal in its politics, very bitter and very negative.

There was a very convincing argument made that the extremists have won and the aggression is now supported by the majority, therefore fighting until surrender was the only alternative.

Though I often disagree with Republicans, I never learned to hate them the way the far right that now controls their party seems to hate President Obama and the Democrats.

There are too many political moderates in America.

There are voices in the Republican Party today who preach pragmatism, who champion conciliation, who counsel compromise. I stand here today to reject those deceptions.

Part of the tribalness of politics is to really dislike the other side with intensity. And the more I see of them the more I hate them.

Congress, too, has changed in our time. There has grown a certain divisiveness. We have seen the hard looks and heard the statements in which not each other's ideas are challenged, but each other's motives. And our great parties have too often been far apart and untrusting of each other.

All political movements are like this — we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.

… when the one side says black and the other white, when the opposite political characters are treated by their respective antagonists as rogues, fools, blockheads, wretches, and all the other names in which the English political dictionary is so very rich, one stands like the ass, between two bundles of hay, considerably embarrassed which ought to be chosen....

You used to get legislation done by getting the moderates to agree. But we have no moderates now so it doesn’t get done

People at the political extremes have an advantage over the rest of us. Only they seem to know exactly who and what is wrong with America and precisely what policies and programs should be adopted to fix it.