The "Facts Don't Care About Your Feelings" Mantra Is Hurting, Not Helping

I believe the political right's marriage to being the embodiment of "facts don't care about your feelings" has become more of a detriment than a benefit for their political objectives.

We've heard since we were children that it's not what you say but how you say it. Why is this the case? Because how you persuade people to care about your cause or consider your ideas is relevant to how you communicate them.

People are more willing to consider a bad idea in a calm & convincing tone than a great idea screamed at the top of their lungs. How you choose to communicate your ideas matters because it takes into consideration the feelings of the people who are being spoken to.

The largest problem I see with the political right is their encouraged neglect of engaging in convincing rhetoric and much of it is fueled by an anti-politically correct movement that associates mindfulness of feelings as being "left" instead of essential for persuasion.

Too often both sides play the game of doing the opposite of what the other is doing even if it's detrimental to their cause. The willful decision to downgrade the importance of emotions is why the right is terrible at combating counter-narratives that are emotionally driven.

However, the rare times when the right has leaned on the emotions of a topic, it's worked in their favor. For example, Glenn Youngkin partly won Virginia because he appealed to the emotions of parents who were concerned about their children's education & protecting them.

Youngkin didn't whip out a PowerPoint and calculator to prove how the schools are failing them and walk off the stage. He spoke to the emotional concerns of the voters, especially mothers, and he was rewarded in the end.

Facts don't care about your feelings is supposed to be a mantra that appeals to truth over fleeting emotions but we're not robots. We all have emotions & to some degree emotionally driven. Some of us tend to be more analytical but find the right topic & even they can be triggered.

Humans don't connect with stat sheets the same way they connect with experiences, stories, or real situations. The left waits for an event to occur to set forth agendas but some on the right think presenting numbers is enough to persuade people to take on your cause. It isn't.

The more you believe that facts don't care about your feelings, the more blinded you'll be about how feelings don't give a damn about your facts either.

Facts and feelings aren't supposed to be mutually exclusive, they're supposed to work in conjunction to persuade.

Politics is sales and the objective is to sell why someone should consider your political proposals & vote for your candidates or party. The right has been habitually behaving like the car salesman who only tells you about the price of the car & not the experience of driving it.

There are a plethora of emotional arguments you can make that support the right-wing perspective. For example, caring about the southern border to me is about not wanting the flourishing of human & sex trafficking well before the fiscal ramifications of unchecked immigration.

Right now it seems like the Republican strategy is to wait for the Democrats to mess up so badly that people will consider the alternative. However, that's a strategy for them to come over but not stay and their advocacy will be just as fleeting as the emotions they're fearful of.

If conservatives want to win hearts and minds, they have to actually care about appealing to the heart as well and not just the mind.

Otherwise, you'll continue to appear cold and distant to the apolitical and especially the youth.