When a group is in conflict with a rival group, it will feel more anger if it is the politically stronger group and less anger when it is the weaker.
Unlike other negative emotions like sadness and fear, angry people are more likely to demonstrate correspondence bias – the tendency to blame a person's behavior more on his nature than on his circumstances. They tend to rely more on stereotypes, and pay less attention to details and more attention to the superficial. In this regard, anger is unlike other "negative" emotions such as sadness and fear, which promote analytical thinking.
An angry person tends to anticipate other events that might cause them anger. They will tend to rate anger-causing events (e.g. being sold a faulty car) as more likely than sad events (e.g. a good friend moving away).
A person who is angry tends to place more blame on another person for their misery. This can create a feedback, as this extra blame can make the angry person angrier still, so they in turn place yet more blame on the other person.
From the Cognitive Effects Section on Wikipedia's Anger Article
Oh FFS Damon.
David Brooks' column was "let's find crazy gun nuts on Facebook and make them hang out in rap sessions with liberals." NOWHERE does he suggest this will change things. What he does say?
You know where the terms "liberal" and "conservative" come from? The French Revolution by way of John Locke and François-René de Chateaubriand. "Liberals" were those that argued natural law, in that all men are created equal and no monarch could rule other men without their consent. "Conservatives" argued that the House of Bourbon was God's chosen ruler of France. Liberals were "liberating" humanity. Conservatives were "conserving" God and Country.
Two hundred years now liberals have been about suffrage, healthcare and universal human rights. Two hundred years now conservatives have been about gentry, prayer in school and bathroom bans.
At some point, it has to be acknowledged that one side is right and the other is wrong.
In this case, the wrong side is the one that believes the right to go plinkin' with a militarily-derived weapon outweighs the right to not get randomly shot in the face.