It is not your imagination. Everyone is angry.
The uncertainty and chaos radiating out of Trump-era politics has dragged the world back into the same emotional territory we saw during the Covid Pandemic: fear, exhaustion, paranoia, resentment, and rage. People are walking around permanently on edge, not entirely sure what they are angry about, but very sure they need somewhere to direct it.
And because anger is contagious, it spreads. One person lashes out, another lashes back, and suddenly society feels like one giant simmering argument where everyone is exhausted, overwhelmed, and permanently seconds away from losing it.
Experts call it the “age of rage”, and honestly, that sounds about right.
The ingredients are obvious enough. Cost-of-living pressures have left households stretched to breaking point. People are working harder for less, racing from one bill to the next, permanently stressed about housing, food, fuel, childcare, insurance, or simply surviving another week.
When people are broke and exhausted, tolerance evaporates.
Then there is the internet — specifically the algorithm-driven outrage machine we mistakenly still call social media. Every platform rewards conflict because conflict keeps people engaged. Rage gets clicks. Hate gets shares. Outrage keeps eyeballs on screens.
Your feed is not designed to make you informed or happy. It is designed to keep you agitated.
Add in sleep deprivation, constant global crises, 24-hour connectivity, economic uncertainty, and the complete collapse of any separation between public and private life, and it becomes obvious why people are snapping at each other in supermarkets, traffic, schools, council meetings, and comment sections.
People are overloaded. Emotionally, financially, mentally. We really didn’t need to pile on with insane fuel prices to tip so many people over the edge.
But while all of that explains the anger, it does not excuse what our political leaders are doing with it.
Because instead of calming the temperature, politicians across the spectrum have realised rage polls well.
Fear mobilises voters. Hate generates headlines. Division drives engagement.
So instead of leadership, we get performance art designed to inflame the situation further.
Doesn’t matter whether you are left or right — the sheer volume of stupidity and hatred being platformed as legitimate political discourse right now is simply overwhelming.
Liberals are busily demonising migrants and poor people, vomiting ideological culture crap that sounds like a first year drama student’s interpretation of Animal Farm meets Mein Kampf. And actually being so dumbfoundingly stupid as to give Tony Abbott – the guy responsible for setting the Liberals up for their current tiny numbers in the house by pissing off conservative women everywhere – the keys to the entire party and responsibility for their next election campaign. That will be so fantastic* to look forward to, great job.
Meanwhile Labor are still blaming the Coalition for literally everything despite the fact they’ve been in power for almost half a decade, trashing regional communities and questioning our intelligence for having a problem with it, and considering it some kind of virtue to trash talk women and children who have been in a refugee camp longer than they have been in government. The out-of-touch smugness and intolerance drips from their mouths just as thickly, with an overlay of moral superiority they have no valid claim to.
The Greens have actually amped up their ideological purity tests and treating disagreement as moral failure, with a side helping of not bothering to hide their antisemitism anymore. Even the teals seem unable to decide whether they want to offer hope and genuine leadership or simply a more polished version of outrage politics, opting for the passive aggressive snobbery and condescending overtones, rather than the more obvious bile.
And of course, in this environment, the Queen of Hate herself polls very well. Pauline Hanson has built an entire political career on turning fear and resentment into a business model. One Nation is not a movement of solutions. The entire movement is a cesspit of hatred, racism, bigotry, stupidity, anger, and division, calling itself “patriotism” and “common sense” and hoping no one will notice they’re just a bunch of lying rent-seekers. And her billionaire buddies combined with Trump’s Tech Bros have delivered her exactly the right petri dish for her brand of yuk to find its moment.
The polls themselves are utter BS, and when the pollsters join the nonsense parade and the likes of Redbridge spew the highest concentration of hate and fear inducing crap like they did this past week, claiming they have ‘numbers’ and this hate fantasy is reality, all hope seems lost.
(I don’t think they do have numbers to support that prediction just BTW, that’s looks to be Samaras still failing to understand the complex polling model I developed in my PhD, although perhaps he’s just wandered off the reservation entirely and is just in it for the clicks. Certainly, at the point you’re predicting the LNP will get no Senate seats in Queensland is the point when an intervention would be appropriate.)
What is more disturbing is watching supposedly mainstream politicians drift toward that same poison because the polling tells them it works.
It would be nice if Barnaby Joyce decided to act like an adult and separate himself from Hanson-style politics, instead of making a virtue out of legitimising it and giving people cover to spew more hate into the world. Not that going back to the Nats would be much better at this point, for they too have seemingly gotten drunk on the hate punch and driven off the road into a stupid tree.
Despite everything, I still believe the core values of the National Party are compassion, community, decency, and respect, and a deep belief in rural values and a country way of life. I still believe most regional communities are fundamentally tolerant, supportive places filled with practical people who simply want everyone to get on with life.
Which is exactly why the nonsense coming from parts of the party lately has been so revolting.
The spectacle around gender politics this past week — including the willingness to platform people whose entire public existence revolves around manufacturing fear and baseless hate — was not leadership. It was culture war theatre imported from overseas outrage factories and dumped directly into regional Australia.
And for what?
To distract from drought? Housing? Health care? Regional roads? Inland Rail?
The fact that farmers are drowning under pressure and costs they cannot control while politicians obsess over social media outrage bait would normally be reason enough for the true elders of the National Party to smack some of the current leadership around the ears and tell them to get back on track.
And I would really like to think nobody in the Nationals sincerely believes culture war amendments to discrimination laws matter more than drought relief, regional infrastructure, or saving Inland Rail.
But here we are.
True Nationals defend regional communities because they are good places to live and the foundation our nation depends upon for food, fibre and resources. They fight for farmers, small business owners, families, and hard working rural people who get the job done.
True Nationals do not go hunting for vulnerable minorities to use as political punching bags. True Nationals do not make a commitment to do something hateful and pointless to win a few votes: they stand up to the hatemongers and tell them to pull their head in.
The National Party on display of late is not the party I grew up in, that my father championed, and my grandfather literally stood for. It has done nothing of late worthy of the name.
What strikes me most is how awkwardly this river of hatred comes out of the mouths of otherwise seemingly intelligent politicians.
Normally coherent people like Jim Chalmers, Tanya Plibersek, Angus Taylor, Matt Canavan, and, yes, Alison Penfold too, often sound like people trying to convince themselves of arguments they do not entirely believe. The lines are rehearsed. The outrage feels focus-grouped. They don’t seem to understand the point behind the talking points.
Hanson never sounds uncomfortable saying abhorrent things. Probably because she believes every word.
And that is the real problem with this age of rage.
The public is already exhausted, frightened, and emotionally overloaded. Instead of helping steady the country, our leaders are deliberately feeding the anger because it suits their political interests.
Not because they believe the hate, but that’s what they think they should do politically.
It’s a complete failure of leadership from the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition down.
Real leadership is not reading polling and repeating whatever hate tested best with focus groups that week.
Real leadership is calming fear, not inflaming it.
It is telling people the truth even when it is unpopular.
And if our politicians were being true to themselves — and true to Australia — perhaps the words coming out of their mouths would not sound so forced, so ugly, and so painfully difficult for even them to say.
If only they chose to be leaders, instead of haters.
End rant.
RK (Kath) Crosby is the CEO of research and strategy company KORE CSR, former strategist for the Australian Democrats, and a well known migraine advocate. She is also the Publisher of New England Times and North Coast Times.
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