America’s Real Emergency Isn’t the Headline Crisis—It’s Our Addiction to Outrage

Q: Why do Americans agree political violence is rising but disagree on what’s driving it?

Pew’s Sept. 2025 findings show **85%** say politically motivated violence is increasing, yet views of extremism split sharply: **77% of Republicans** call left-wing extremism a major problem, while **76% of Democrats** say the same about right-wing extremism. Shared fear doesn’t guarantee shared interpretation; identity and information streams shape what people see as the primary threat.

Q: What does “can’t agree on basic facts” actually mean?

In Pew’s March 10–16, 2025 survey, **eight-in-ten** adults said Republican and Democratic voters cannot agree on basic facts about major issues. Among them, **67%** pointed to interpreting the same information differently, and **53%** cited getting different information. The problem isn’t only misinformation; it’s fractured interpretation and fragmented media diets.

The breaking-news banner changes hourly. The deeper emergency is structural: a civic condition that turns every event into a loyalty test, and outrage into our default language.

By TheMurrow Editorial

January 25, 2026

America’s Real Emergency Isn’t the Headline Crisis—It’s Our Addiction to Outrage

Key Points

1Recognize the structural emergency: anger, distrust, and fear now shape politics as measurable, self-reinforcing public attitudes.
2Track the split: 85% see political violence rising, yet parties disagree sharply on extremism—turning shared fear into mutual blame.
3Resist the incentives: outrage spreads because high-arousal content wins attention; slow consumption, separate facts from interpretation, and diversify inputs.

The most dangerous American emergency is the one that never makes the breaking-news banner.

It isn’t a single riot, a single election, a single trial, or a single war abroad. It’s the civic condition that turns every event—large or small—into a fresh excuse to loathe strangers, suspect institutions, and retreat into camps that no longer share a common account of reality.

You can feel it in the way conversations start: not with questions, but with verdicts. Not with “What happened?” but with “Look what they did.” The outrage arrives pre-packaged, complete with villains, motives, and a ready-made demand for public punishment.

New survey data suggests that this isn’t just a vibe. It’s measurable—an anger-and-mistrust spiral that increasingly looks structural, self-reinforcing, and hard to shut off. The headline crisis changes by the hour. The deeper emergency stays.

When a country can’t even agree on basic facts, every headline becomes a loyalty test—and outrage becomes the default language.
— — TheMurrow Editorial

Outrage isn’t a mood anymore; it’s a public attitude you can measure

The most clarifying numbers in American politics right now aren’t about turnout or approval ratings. They’re about feelings—anger, distrust, and fear—and how sharply those feelings split along partisan identity.

A Pew Research Center survey fielded Sept. 22–28, 2025 finds Americans’ feelings toward the federal government have grown more polarized. The standout detail: 44% of Democrats and Democratic-leaners say they feel “angry” at the federal government, compared with 9% of Republicans and Republican-leaners. Pew describes Democrats’ anger as a new high in its trend data. The direction matters: anger is no longer concentrated on one side of the aisle by default; it is circulating.

Just as striking, trust is collapsing. In the same Pew reporting, Democrats’ trust in the federal government to do the right thing (all or most of the time) sits at 9%, which Pew characterizes as a low point across nearly 70 years of trend history. A democracy can survive policy disagreement. It struggles when large numbers believe the system itself cannot be trusted to behave decently.

44%

Democrats and Democratic-leaners who say they feel “angry” at the federal government (Pew, Sept. 22–28, 2025).

Republicans and Republican-leaners who say they feel “angry” at the federal government (Pew, Sept. 22–28, 2025).

Democrats’ trust in the federal government to do the right thing all/most of the time—described by Pew as a near-70-year low.

Anger plus distrust is combustible

Anger alone can be mobilizing; it can also be reform-oriented. Distrust alone can be cautious; it can even be healthy in moderation. The pairing is what makes outrage politically useful and socially contagious: the public is primed to believe not only that something is wrong, but that the wrongness is intentional—and imposed by hostile actors.

That psychological posture produces predictable outcomes:

- More willingness to assume bad faith
- Faster escalation to moral condemnation
- Less patience for procedural limits (courts, elections, oversight)
- Higher appetite for punitive politics

None of this requires conspiracy. It follows from the emotional math of anger and distrust. Outrage isn’t a momentary outburst; it becomes a way of interpreting the world.

Predictable outcomes of anger + distrust

✓More willingness to assume bad faith
✓Faster escalation to moral condemnation
✓Less patience for procedural limits (courts, elections, oversight)
✓Higher appetite for punitive politics

Americans agree violence is rising—then disagree on what it means

If outrage were merely partisan theater, Americans would at least differ on whether anything is wrong. Instead, the shared alarm is real—and the interpretive split is where the fuel lives.

In another Pew Research Center survey fielded Sept. 22–28, 2025, 85% of Americans say politically motivated violence is increasing. That is not a marginal concern. It is a near-consensus perception of a deteriorating civic environment.

Yet when Pew asks what kinds of extremism are a “major problem,” Americans diverge dramatically along partisan lines. 77% of Republicans identify left-wing extremism as a major problem (while 27% say right-wing extremism is). 76% of Democrats identify right-wing extremism as a major problem (while 32% say left-wing extremism is).

85%

Americans who say politically motivated violence is increasing (Pew, Sept. 22–28, 2025).

A shared fear becomes a machine for blame

The numbers describe a society standing in the same storm but pointing at different clouds. Most people agree something dangerous is happening. Many cannot agree on the primary source, the likely perpetrators, or the appropriate response. That disagreement is not a footnote; it is the mechanism that keeps outrage circulating.

In Pew’s open-ended responses about causes of politically motivated violence, Americans frequently cite the “rhetoric/behavior of the other side,” partisan polarization (11% overall), and an unwillingness to engage or understand (10%). Social media (6%) and traditional media (6%) also appear.

Those answers carry an uncomfortable implication: people don’t just fear violence. They also believe the country’s information and communication systems—online and off—intensify the conditions that make violence seem plausible.

A near-consensus that violence is increasing sits beside a near-total disagreement about who’s responsible. That gap is where outrage thrives.
— — TheMurrow Editorial

The epistemic break: when “basic facts” become partisan property

Outrage addiction isn’t sustained merely by anger. It’s sustained by a collapse of shared reference points—the civic equivalent of losing a common language.

Pew’s survey fielded March 10–16, 2025 captures this bluntly: eight-in-ten U.S. adults say Republican and Democratic voters cannot agree on basic facts about important issues. Only 18% say partisans can agree on basic facts but differ on policy.

That distinction—facts versus policies—is everything. Policy disagreement implies a shared reality and competing values. Fact disagreement implies competing realities.

Among those who say partisans can’t agree on basic facts, 67% cite a major reason: people interpret the same information differently. Another 53% say a major reason is that people get different information altogether. Those two explanations reinforce each other. Different information streams create different interpretations; different interpretations justify seeking different information streams.

Outrage is easier when reality is contestable

Outrage flourishes under conditions of uncertainty and contestation, when each side can plausibly claim the other is not merely wrong but delusional—or lying. If you believe the other camp’s “facts” are fiction, then compromise looks like surrender. Engagement starts to feel like contamination.

The result is a civic environment where people are perpetually ready to be offended because offense has become a signal of group membership. Outrage is no longer just a reaction to events; it becomes a way to prove you’re paying attention to the “right” version of events.

Pew’s own framing here is a kind of expert warning. When eight in ten adults believe partisans can’t even agree on basic facts, the nation isn’t merely polarized. It’s epistemically fragmented.

The attention economy: outrage is rewarded, repeated, and refined

A public can’t become outraged on command unless a system keeps putting outrage in front of it. The research here doesn’t require mystical explanations. It points to incentives—how information is selected, amplified, and kept in circulation.

Pew’s open-ended responses on political violence include social media (6%) and traditional media (6%) as cited causes. Those are not dominant categories in the topline, but they matter because they identify the channels through which outrage becomes ambient. People experience politics as a feed: curated, competitive, and optimized for attention.

Outrage performs well—and performance shapes content

Platforms and media outlets don’t need to “want” chaos for chaos to win. High-arousal content—anger, fear, humiliation—keeps people watching, sharing, and commenting. That is a functional claim about incentives, not a moral accusation. When attention is the scarce resource, content that provokes strong emotion gains an edge.

A useful way to think about this dynamic is as a loop:

- Outrage attracts attention.
- Attention signals “relevance.”
- “Relevant” content gets more distribution.
- More distribution produces more outrage.

Even readers who despise the cycle can get swept into it. The feed keeps returning to the same emotional register. The political imagination narrows: everything is either an emergency or a betrayal.

The outrage loop

1.Outrage attracts attention.
2.Attention signals “relevance.”
3.“Relevant” content gets more distribution.
4.More distribution produces more outrage.

Multiple perspectives: accountability vs. amplification

Some will argue outrage is simply accountability—an appropriate response to real abuses of power, genuine injustice, or dangerous rhetoric. That argument deserves respect. Anger can be an engine of reform; public scrutiny can deter wrongdoing.

The civic danger appears when outrage becomes a default setting rather than a proportional response—when the system treats every controversy as existential and every opponent as illegitimate. The problem isn’t that citizens get angry. The problem is that the country’s information environment increasingly makes it hard to be anything but angry.

Outrage doesn’t need a conspiracy to spread. It only needs incentives that reward high-arousal content over careful thought.
— — TheMurrow Editorial

Outrage fatigue is real—and it’s starting to look like withdrawal

If outrage addiction is the emergency, news avoidance is the symptom that suggests the body politic is trying—clumsily—to protect itself.

The Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2025 (as summarized in Reuters Institute posts and secondary writeups) finds 40% of people across markets sometimes or often avoid the news, up from 29% in 2017, and tied for the highest recorded level (with 2024). The reported reasons are telling: news negativity harms mood (39%), people feel burned out by too much news (31%), and war/conflict coverage is overwhelming.

Those aren’t excuses. They’re diagnoses. When the news feels like an endless conveyor belt of menace, many people step away—not because they don’t care, but because they can’t live in a constant state of alarm.

40%

People across markets who sometimes or often avoid the news (Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025 summary), up from 29% in 2017.

The civic cost of opting out

Avoidance may protect mental health, but it can degrade citizenship. The people most exhausted by outrage are often the ones most likely to disengage, leaving a public square increasingly dominated by those who are energized by conflict.

The feedback loop is cruel:

- Outrage-driven content pushes some people away.
- The remaining audience skews more partisan, more engaged by conflict.
- Content skews even more outrage-heavy to satisfy the remaining audience.
- More people leave.

A democracy needs disagreement. It also needs a critical mass of citizens who can tolerate complexity without fleeing.

A deeper emergency than any one headline: the outrage infrastructure

Americans often talk about civic breakdown as a sequence of crises: a violent incident, a disputed election, a controversial court decision, a scandal. The research suggests something broader: a durable outrage infrastructure built from three interacting forces—public attitudes, information incentives, and identity-based interpretation.

Start with attitudes: anger toward government is rising and polarizing (Pew, Sept. 2025), and trust has collapsed to startling lows (Pew reports Democrats at 9% trusting government to do the right thing all/most of the time). Add fear: 85% say political violence is increasing (Pew, Sept. 2025). Then add epistemic fracture: eight-in-ten say partisans cannot agree on basic facts (Pew, March 2025).

These are not isolated data points. Together, they describe a country primed for perpetual grievance—ready to interpret each event not as a problem to solve but as proof the other side is dangerous.

Real-world example: the same crisis, two incompatible stories

Pew’s extremism findings offer a case study in how outrage becomes ambient. Republicans and Democrats aren’t merely ranking threats differently. They’re living inside different causal narratives: each side sees the other’s extremism as the “major problem,” and its own side’s extremism as less central.

That asymmetry doesn’t require bad people. It’s a predictable outcome of identity-protective thinking: humans notice threats from out-groups more readily than threats from in-groups. The political result is grim. Shared concern about violence doesn’t produce shared action; it produces shared fear plus mutual blame.

Practical implications: what readers can do without pretending it’s easy

No individual can redesign social platforms or rewrite the incentives of the modern media economy alone. Individual choices still matter because outrage is contagious. Fewer transmissions mean fewer outbreaks.

Practical steps that respect reality:

- Slow your intake. If the Reuters Institute’s avoidance numbers reflect overload, then rationing news isn’t apathy; it can be harm reduction.
- Separate facts from interpretation. Pew finds 67% say people interpret the same information differently. Train yourself to ask: What happened? What’s my inference? What’s my moral judgment?
- Diversify inputs without “both-sides” cynicism. Pew also finds 53% cite getting different information as a major reason for fact disagreement. Sampling more than one reputable source reduces the odds you’re trapped in a single narrative.
- Resist performative outrage. If a reaction is partly about signaling loyalty, pause. Loyalty isn’t the same as truth.
- Value engagement that clarifies rather than inflames. In Pew’s open-ended findings, unwillingness to engage/understand shows up (10%). Curiosity can be a civic act.

These steps won’t cure the emergency. They can make you less useful to it.

Practical steps that respect reality

✓Slow your intake. If the Reuters Institute’s avoidance numbers reflect overload, then rationing news isn’t apathy; it can be harm reduction.
✓Separate facts from interpretation. Pew finds 67% say people interpret the same information differently. Train yourself to ask: What happened? What’s my inference? What’s my moral judgment?
✓Diversify inputs without “both-sides” cynicism. Pew also finds 53% cite getting different information as a major reason for fact disagreement. Sampling more than one reputable source reduces the odds you’re trapped in a single narrative.
✓Resist performative outrage. If a reaction is partly about signaling loyalty, pause. Loyalty isn’t the same as truth.
✓Value engagement that clarifies rather than inflames. In Pew’s open-ended findings, unwillingness to engage/understand shows up (10%). Curiosity can be a civic act.

Key Insight

These steps won’t cure the emergency. They can make you less useful to it.

The Murrow view: outrage is a profit center—and a governance problem

Outrage will always exist in politics; injustice and abuse are real. The emergency is when outrage becomes a business model and a substitute for democratic competence.

Pew’s data offers a sober baseline. Americans are angry. Trust is low. Fear of political violence is high. Most believe the parties can’t agree on basic facts, largely because they interpret information differently or receive different information altogether.

Those conditions make governance brittle. Legislators negotiate less when their voters see negotiation as betrayal. Institutions perform worse when they are widely presumed illegitimate. Public discussion turns punitive when people assume the other side is not simply mistaken but malicious.

The hard truth is that a country can survive bad policy for a time. A country struggles to survive a shared conviction that the other half is irredeemable.

The antidote isn’t forced “civility,” the kind that demands silence in the face of wrongdoing. The antidote is proportion, verification, and a renewed insistence that citizenship requires more than feeling the correct emotions on cue.

Outrage can be a spark. America’s problem is the system that keeps striking matches.

Editor's Note

The antidote isn’t forced “civility,” the kind that demands silence in the face of wrongdoing. The antidote is proportion, verification, and a renewed insistence that citizenship requires more than feeling the correct emotions on cue.

About the Author

TheMurrow Editorial is a writer for TheMurrow covering opinion.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is outrage actually increasing, or does it just feel that way?

Survey data suggests measurable shifts in public attitudes. Pew’s Sept. 22–28, 2025 survey found 44% of Democrats felt “angry” at the federal government (vs. 9% of Republicans). Pew also reports Democrats’ trust in government to do the right thing all/most of the time at 9%, a historic low in its trend framing. Those are more than vibes.

Why do Americans agree political violence is rising but disagree on what’s driving it?

Pew’s Sept. 2025 findings show 85% say politically motivated violence is increasing, yet views of extremism split sharply: 77% of Republicans call left-wing extremism a major problem, while 76% of Democrats say the same about right-wing extremism. Shared fear doesn’t guarantee shared interpretation; identity and information streams shape what people see as the primary threat.

Are social media and the press to blame for outrage?

Pew’s open-ended responses on causes of political violence include social media (6%) and traditional media (6%). That doesn’t prove sole responsibility, but it signals public recognition that information channels influence temperature. Incentives that favor high-arousal content can amplify anger even when the underlying events are real and serious.

What does “can’t agree on basic facts” actually mean?

In Pew’s March 10–16, 2025 survey, eight-in-ten adults said Republican and Democratic voters cannot agree on basic facts about major issues. Among them, 67% pointed to interpreting the same information differently, and 53% cited getting different information. The problem isn’t only misinformation; it’s fractured interpretation and fragmented media diets.

Is news avoidance a civic failure or a rational response?

It can be both. The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025 (as summarized in Reuters Institute posts/secondary reporting) finds 40% across markets sometimes or often avoid the news, up from 29% in 2017. Many cite mood impacts (39%) and burnout (31%). Avoidance can protect mental health, but widespread disengagement can also leave public debate to the most outraged participants.

How can an individual resist outrage without becoming indifferent?

Start with habits that reduce impulsive escalation: slow your consumption, separate verified facts from interpretation, and consult more than one reputable source. Pew’s data suggests disagreement stems partly from different information (53%) and different interpretations (67%). The goal isn’t emotional numbness; it’s proportional response grounded in shared reality wherever possible.

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