Posted on 03/19/2026 7:11:16 AM PDT by MtnClimber
There is an interesting article in the Telegraph by a psychotherapist called Jonathan Alpert, called ‘There’s a reason the Left seems more psychologically distressed than the Right’ (you can read it here). This is how he opens:
In my clinical practice, one pattern has become increasingly difficult to ignore. Among a subset of patients on the political Left, hostility toward political opponents goes beyond dislike or even hatred.
It sometimes takes the form of moralised fantasies about an opponent’s death, disappointment that Donald Trump’s shooter did not have better aim, or statements that certain public figures ‘deserve’ to be eliminated for the greater good. These remarks are rarely presented as literal intent. But they nevertheless offer a revealing glimpse into emotional regulation and psychological wellbeing.
It appears that the Left-leaning patient is quick to express his or her distress in aggressive ways:
What stands out is not only the content of these expressions, but their tone. They are often delivered with intense anger and no shame, as though such thoughts are an understandable or even justified response to the political moment. At no point does the patient see these reactions as excessive or out of control.
Similar behaviours can be observed in real life, too. I was walking around New York City in the summer after the ‘No Kings’ protests. I was looking at a heaping high pile of anti-Trump signs and a woman came up to me and said: “Aren’t these great?” My response: “I kinda like some of what Trump has done.” Her response: “WELL F— YOU THEN!”’
Conversely, those on the Right are more restrained:
Conservative patients tend to behave somewhat differently. I routinely hear strong dislike, contempt and anger toward political leaders they oppose and it’s not uncommon to hear a patient say they disliked President Biden or strongly disagreed with his stance on the border. Many patients viewed Kamala Harris as incompetent and not at all prepared to be president. Some even described her as “dumb”.
But in my experience, this hostility rarely crossed into wishes of annihilation. Political opponents might be seen as wrong, corrupt or dangerous, but they are still human. From a clinical perspective, that distinction matters.
Later in the piece, Alpert explains this different in more detail:
On the Right, by contrast, there has long been a tendency to emphasise emotional restraint. Stoicism is admired. Complaining is viewed with suspicion. Personal struggle is expected to be managed privately. I have found that conservative patients are far less likely to describe their distress in therapeutic language or frame discomfort as pathology. That does not mean they suffer less. It means they express suffering differently.
Political anger on the Right more often appears as cynicism, resentment or disengagement rather than vulnerability or victimhood. Many conservative patients view politics as important but ultimately secondary. Their primary sources of meaning might be family, work, faith and local responsibility. When elections are lost, they tend to return to careers, marriages, children and routines. Politics frustrates them, but it does not typically dominate their life.
On the Left, political identity can often become inseparable from selfhood. When politics is experienced as an all-encompassing struggle between good and evil, emotional intensity escalates. Opponents are no longer merely wrong, but dangerous. Disagreement becomes existential threat. Loss becomes catastrophe.
What Alpert doesn’t apparently consider is the extent to which this difference might be attributable to age. After all, younger adults are more inclined to be attracted to the monochrome politics of the Left, their brains as yet unsaddled with the complications, provisos and more balanced considerations of a longer life. Older adults are inevitably more inclined to the ‘seen it all before’ form of cynicism.
Another way of looking at the issue is that people who are anxious and inclined to distress, and therefore perhaps more liable to explosive outbursts of rage, are more easily attracted to Left-wing politics, as explained in an online article published by two academics on Cambridge University Press, in this instance looking at people’s attraction to Left-wing economic policy as a means of escaping their sense of social exclusion.
In ‘Why anxious people lean to the Left on economic policy: personality, social exclusion and redistribution’, Adam Panish and Andrew Delton observe that:
Right-wing beliefs function as a salve for people who are chronically anxious and fearful, at least according to one of the oldest and most influential theories in political psychology. Yet recent research shows that liberals, not conservatives, are more prone to negative emotions. The link between mental health and ideology has generated much interest, sending journalists and pundits scrambling to figure out why liberals are so “depressed, anxious, or otherwise neurotic compared to conservatives”.
An article in Columbia University Magazine explains ‘Why depression rates are higher among liberals’:
American adults who identify as politically liberal have long reported lower levels of happiness and psychological well-being than conservatives, a trend that mental-health experts suspect is at least partly explained by liberals’ tendency to spend more time worrying about stress-inducing topics like racial injustice, income inequality, gun violence and climate change.
Now a team of Columbia epidemiologists has found evidence that the same pattern holds for American teenagers. The researchers analysed surveys collected from more than 86,000 12th graders over a 13-year period and discovered that while rates of depression have been rising among students of all political persuasions and demographics, they have been increasing most sharply among progressive students — and especially among liberal girls from low-income families.
You can read the Columbia epidemiological paper here. Another paper, available on Researchgate, concluded from research that:
There is a strongly elevated risk for mental illness among the extreme liberals (+150%), a small increase among the liberals and slightly liberals (+29-32%), and somewhat lower rates among conservatives and extreme conservatives (–17-24%). Breaking the pattern, slightly conservatives had a marginally increased rate (+6%). A variant of this analysis was also carried out by including the happiness metrics reverse-coded. This produced materially the same pattern, but was weaker since the happiness items had a weaker relationship with political ideology than the mental illness variables.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue has a piece analysing aggression in Left-wing politics, while also acknowledging its presence on the Right. But the Left has some strong defining features:
Drawing on our own definition of extremism and this crucial distinction, we suggest that Left-wing extremism should be defined as a belief system that:
- Dogmatically claims the absolute moral superiority of communist or socialist political values,
- That separates political actors into binary moral categories accordingly, and
- That aspires to gain a monopoly of control over society.
Left-wing extremists commonly reject key tenets of liberal democracies, among them the separation of powers, universal human rights and political pluralism. They frequently express sympathies for authoritarian regimes and the conspiracy theories spread by them.
Of course, a common characteristic of the Left is to blame everyone else in a fog of febrile and desultory grievances, and that’s just as applicable to aggressive and angry speech. Trotsky exonerated such behaviour: “Abusive language and swearing are a legacy of slavery, humiliation and disrespect for human dignity, one’s own and that of other people.”
Looking up ‘Righteous Anger’ on AI produced this explanation:
Anger makes you feel righteous by functioning as a moral disinfectant, transforming feelings of powerlessness into a sense of superiority, vindication and justified control. It acts as a ‘power’ emotion that reinforces self-worth and confirms your moral standards against perceived injustice, offering a comfortable sense of being ‘right’.
Nothing could have described an angry and distressed Left-wing activist better.
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So it was not just my imagination...running away with me.
The reason is because they are GODLESS.
Name one democrat on Capitol Hill that proclaims Jesus Christ as their savior.
I know of none.
Their “little g” gods are power and money.
They can’t live without hate. Hate is their foundation and their fuel. These people live Orwell’s “Two Minute Hate” every 120 seconds.
Interesting. Unusual honesty - even if strongly self-censored by the usual leftist press blinders and handcuffs.
Did you notice the snide remaining prejudices though: “Usual theory” by “the experts” in relationships and morality at - of all places - Columbia?
I have read and heard it stated thus:
Conservatives see Leftists as people with bad ideas.
Leftists see conservatives as bad people with ideas.
let me summarize this ego trip freak show article
we are in the middle of a communist color revolution
there are communist operations in play and there are the useful idiots who eat it up
its hungary hungary hippo but with lies
there is no racism, just a group of people who want cash from another group because the other group is dumb enough to give it to them
the useful idiot do want to eliminate those who wreck their broken world view and threaten their group membership
not hard kids
100% agreed. They are unmoored, frightened, and vicious.
Useful idiots want friends/acceptance more than anything
Friends who believe lies like them
That’s the left
...and there is no MAGA, never was, another communist operation to help retards focus their rage
I’m just a small town kid from somewhere in America who loves freedom and liberty know a scam when I see it
Were told “NO!” and can’t deal with it.
I agree 100%. When you have Jesus as your savior and the Holy Spirit in your heart, you have the ability to put everything in perspective. Knowing that God is sovereign and in control, removes much of the fear.
In general, I love Trump and what he is doing, but I do not believe there is a political solution to what ails this country ... rather, only a spiritual one. We will only come together when there is a true revival. By the way, this has happened at least twice in the history of this country.
Leftists describe conservatives as just plain evil.
And yet every four years you see one Democrat presidential candidate after another going to black churches, pandering for their votes, and proclaiming they’re “Christians”. Their staunch support for LGBTQ+ issues and abortion on demand says otherwise!
I would post inverse causation.
Crazy, violent, authoritarian people embrace leftism.
Although I agree there is a feedback loop that increases both tendencies.
- Dogmatically claims the absolute moral superiority of communist or socialist political values,
- That separates political actors into binary moral categories accordingly, and
- That aspires to gain a monopoly of control over society.
Visit Bluesky if you want to see these pathologies in action (btw, we need more conservative voices there to give a reality check).
I’m not sure how these feeds into the overall story of liberals but here’s my take. Liberals live in a world where the correct thing is someone takes care of them. It’s as if even being physical adults they want a parent to pay their rent, clean their house, manage their affairs, etc. Their basic problem is they have this expectation and that expectation will never be met to the standard they expect. Even if government programs existed to satisfy their expectations, those programs would never satisfy their unending expectations. “Well, sure you paid my rent, but what about all my other bills?”
I remember reading about ten-year-olds being left at home in their mountain cabins as man of the house because their dads went off to fight the Civil War. The problem I see with today’s youth is NOTHING is expected of them. They generally don’t even have chores that they do around the house. Or, if they do they sulk resentfully.
Most of the far-left females have gone full lesbian and cut off the liberal males from all copulation. All the far-left women want to do is act like muzzie terrorists, screaming like lunatic banshees when they are not drawing up their riot signs. These females have all begun growing salt and pepper hair styles and beards tinged with pink and blue dyes. They all love to scream. blow whistles and trombones and wear silly costumes. And of course, they all hate Americans and President Trump. Real sickos. About the only time you can get them to shut the hell up is when the Hollowoodies are having an awards trophy show on TV.
Summed up in one sent3nce.
Because th3y are mentally unstable AND/OR demon driven, and filled with demonic hate.
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