The exchange went like this:

RAJU: Senator McSally, should the Senate consider new evidence as part of the impeachment trial?

McSALLY: You’re a liberal hack. I’m not talking to you.

RAJU: You’re not going to comment, Senator?

McSALLY: You’re a liberal hack, buddy.

McSally on Left and Sinema on Right

A little background on the Senator might be helpful. She was not elected to her position. She lost to Kyrsten Sinema and was then appointed to fill the seat vacated by Senator Jon Kyl. Currently she is in a very competitive race against Mark Kelly, hoping to be elected as Senator this coming November.

Supporting this notion that the incident was staged is that McSally quickly posted the video. Fox News host Sean Hannity instantly began to praise her conduct, and she got additional publicity by appearing on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show. Meanwhile, President Trump’s 2020 campaign tweeted out “THREE CHEERS” for the senator while directing followers to donate to her campaign. To me, this appears to be a bit too choreographed to have come out of an unplanned emotional outburst.

That said, I hasten to say, I did not choose this incident in order to attack a Republican candidate. Instead, I chose it because just as I was about to write today’s post the McSally incident happened to go viral. The incident, therefore, is particularly fresh in the minds of readers and of high interest, so that it serves as a useful jumping off point to address issues relevant to this blog. Before going on, in an effort to be fair, I point out that I personally have seen both Democrats and Republicans throw insults at news outlets that tend to be biased toward their opposing political party.

Why Did The Incident Go Viral?

Although it is not unusual for both Democrats and Republicans to insult news outlets when it publishes a specific negative story about their representatives, this McSally incident is nevertheless unusual for the following reason. We don’t typically see a senator, upon being asked a reasonable question by a reporter, responding disrespectfully, quickly post it on line, and then have the president cheer the insulter.

Senator McNally received a great deal of free press coverage, so should this become the new norm? Is this really how Americans want to see their elected officials respond to reporters? And do we really want our kids learning to insult everyone they disagree with by observing our national leaders acting this way? I suggest that the anxiety provoked by these questions are at the heart of why the McSally incident went viral.

A Paradox

On the one hand, there is a considerable amount of evidence that people who are very insulting tend to be less liked and respected. On the other hand, many politicians can be very insulting toward people with whom they disagree, and despite this, they win elections and many people idolize them.

Explaining the Paradox

First of all, the negative effects of being insulting is strongest in interpersonal relationships. As I define these terms, your interpersonal relationships are your interactions with people with whom you have direct, face to face interactions on an ongoing basis.

The relationship that politicians have with voters is best viewed as an intergroup relationship. The intergroup relationship I’m discussing today regarding McSally involves the group of people who might potentially vote for her, the groups of people who have a vested interest in getting her elected, and the groups of people who are working to get someone else elected.  Although insulting people is relevant to intergroup relationships, other issues often become more important.

In an interpersonal relationship, if you attempt to insult the person with whom you are personally interacting, that person might insult you back and the interaction can escalate into violence. In fact, the most common reason people turn to violence is because they felt someone treated them disrespectfully.

When we see politicians seeking to insult someone, they are modeling for others this type of violence producing behavior. But what makes this type of behavior very different for politicians is that they almost always have a group of supporters standing by them and a team of armed security personnel well trained to intervene if an insulted party makes any moves at all that can be viewed as violent.  Under this set of circumstances, it is far safer to play the part of a tough person who doesn’t take any crap. Meanwhile, as politicians model this behavior for people without the protections afforded to politicians, it can potentially increase levels of violence for non-politicians.

Here’s another difference between what typically happens during your interpersonal relationships and the intergroup interactions that involve politicians.  When someone directly seeks to insult you, unless you are well trained in handling this in a peaceful manner, you are likely to take the insult personally. The emotions that arise in this situation are more likely to be stronger than typically experienced when groups of people see on TV or in a large arena a politician throwing insults at someone they don’t personally know.

Politicians, moreover, are not seeking to develop a sound interpersonal relationship with you. They are, instead, seeking your vote. They know very well that not everyone is going to vote for them.  If they anger the voters who aren’t likely to vote for them anyway, and end up getting 51 percent of the vote, this, to them, is success.

Now, when it comes to interpersonal relationships, if you act in a manner that leads to even a minority not liking you, this can lead to far more direct problems for you than if a minority of people don’t vote for some politician. If those who personally know you don’t like you, they can begin to say things behind your back to people who actually personally interact with you. Some of what gets said can be untrue and very unfair, but you may never hear about this. This behind your back treatment may result in people that you like no longer inviting you to parties.  When you used to be invited to go bowling, now someone else is getting invited. In a work setting, you may be passed up for promotion. These types of consequences can have direct effects on your personal life. For politicians, the personal effects that may occur if they anger a minority of people who would have been unlikely to vote for them, would be far less important to them than getting elected.

Also, note that when people decide on who to vote for, they consider many issues, not just whether or not the candidate insults anyone. When politicians insult someone, many voters are apt to say to themselves, they aren’t doing anything much different than all the other politicians. These voters then choose a candidate based on other issues. If some voters recognize that a particular politician insults others more than other candidates, they may feel that his or her stand on immigration is a far more important issue.

Others will actually like the insulting because the insults are aimed not at them, but at people whom they have come to dislike. If you have become angry because you like to use the “N-word” and people have criticized you about it, you may have become angry about what strikes you as political correctness.

Other voters are very angry at the lack of progress being made by current career politicians on solving immigration, economic, and other problems. Many of these voters’ own personal style for dealing with this anger is to throw insults at these politicians. When politicians do the same thing, these voters see them as one of them. These same individuals are apparently unable to see that if these politicians were throwing the same types of insults at them, they would not like this. To them, it’s perfectly okay to insult people they have come to dislike. If they are personally insulted, however, then they would view it as wrong. It seems to me that because it is wrong for people to insult them when someone disagrees with them, it is equally wrong for them to insult others when they disagree with others.

Many like to characterize politicians that use insults as their way of being a tough no-nonsense kind of person. But in my view a person can surely be a tough no-nonsense kind of person without seeking to insult people.

When politicians are asked why they use insults, they at times say that those whom they insult, insulted them first. But those who insulted them often say they did it because others insulted either them, or someone they personally know. And so many who are either leaders of our nation, or hope to be so, are choosing to engage in this “You Started it First” name-calling game.

It is simply not true that if someone throws an insult at you the only intelligent way to respond is to seek to insult them back. In my view, within the political arena, one way to respond in a manner that I would respect is to state firmly, “I’m not here to get into this name-calling game. I’m here to let the public know what my positions are on the problems of this nation, and how I, if elected, plan to go about fixing them.”

I hope this post will help you to think twice if you have begun to think that the type of insulting behavior that appears to be helping to get attention from politicians would be just as effective in your own interpersonal relationships.

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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.