Rants Put a Stop to Real Conversation

Aug. 17, 2025

The tempests blow up out of nowhere.  Conversations with friends that all of a sudden take a political turn – usually a turn for the worse.

Just in the past month, I have been party to four such episodes.  This isn’t a case of one side or the other.  Two involved liberals.  Two involved conservatives.  Doesn’t make any difference, either way sours a perfectly good get-together.

One might excuse these verbal barrages as nothing more than people expressing their convictions.  Ours is a free country, what should be wrong with that?  The problem is that these objectionable moments follow a basic downward pattern:

• They start with a statement. Even when the first sentence is posed as a question (“What do you think about . . .?”), there is barely a pause before the protagonist begins to answer it.
• The comments are stridently one-sided. It’s almost humorous when the speaker says he or she doesn’t know what “those people” are thinking and yet evinces no real interest in finding out.
• The speaker cuts off demurrals by citing “facts” that in the moment can’t be proven one way or the other.
• Like a snowball rolling downhill, the tirade builds momentum. The speaker has to get it all out.  If someone ventures to chime in on any point, that’s encouragement to keep going.
• When the topic is finally exhausted, the speaker bounces to some other grievance.  And away he or she goes again.

These overweening espousals of a particular point of view seem to indicate Political Derangement Syndrome, or maybe it’s Political Obsession Disorder, or some other designation we can dream up.  At bare minimum it’s anti-conversation in nature and form.

Even if they could get a word in edgewise, others around the table are left kind of speechless.  It’s hard to have a useful interchange when participants don’t have the same reality, the same factual foundation.  Listeners are perplexed, then uncomfortable, eventually even perturbed.  If they can get up and walk away, they do.

I for one struggle in these situations.  It’s not who I am.  In the heat of the moment, I’m not nimble enough of mind nor quick enough of tongue to interject a more constructive direction.  In part that’s because I’m too quick to withdraw into myself, wondering for the umpteenth time what brings on these unprovoked political harangues.

Admittedly, expressing my objections here is little more than a rant of my own.  Please forgive my whining.  I’m seeking, however, to set the stage to next week look more constructively at the essential element of a conversation — which these days we desperately need to be working on.

For the moment, due to the work on Our Common Purpose, I’m likely oversensitive to one-sided arguments.  Even so, I have no doubt you have had similar experiences.  Please help us to understand.  What are the blowhards trying to accomplish?  What inner need is being satisfied?  Maybe among friends, they perceive it just as banter.  Maybe they need to vent.  Maybe they’re seeking validation for their point of view.  Maybe they’re trying to educate.  Maybe their inner need to tell all is more important than the damage it causes.  Your insights would be appreciated.

To get the ball rolling I consulted, what else?, Google.  It turns out there’s a whole lot written on this general topic, a fair amount of it coming from psychologists.  For instance, most everyone has heard of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).  Credit goes to Charles Krauthammer, the late political columnist and speechwriter who also happened to be a psychiatrist.  When he came up with the term, way back in 2003, it was Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Today TDS cuts both ways.  It can refer not only to those who are fanatical in opposition but now also to those who aggressively support him regardless of what he does.

Apropos of that, what we’re discussing here is a malady that afflicts people of both parties.  When the potential label of Political Derangement Syndrome – or PDS – came to me in the middle of some recent night, it sounded clever, maybe even original.  A working definition could be “someone who compulsively imposes his or her political preoccupations upon others.”

Balance that wild idea against the caution of one of the multitude of psychologists who have weighed in on this general subject.  Brad Brenner Ph.D. of the Therapy Group of DC, argues strenuously that “pathologizing political disagreement—whether it’s hurled at critics or flipped back at die-hard supporters of Bush, Obama, Trump, Clinton, or anyone else—undermines mental well-being and shuts down meaningful conversation.”

No argument that meaningful conversation is the objective but what’s really standing in the way?  Is it that a too-easy putdown is used to dismiss legitimate discussion?  Or is there actually a pathology, a deviation from the norm, that makes real conversation impossible?  The rants in question here shut down the meaningful conversations that Brenner is trying to protect.

Another resource, RehabNet.com, which specializes in addiction recovery, chooses the somewhat softer label of Political Obsession Disorder. Its description of the malady is right on the money:

“Political obsession can easily turn into emotional overload, especially during an election year or shortly after when coverage of the candidates is still going strong. This can result in extreme anxiety, anger, or frustration, especially during political events or when discussing them.  To make matters worse, people who are in the throes of political obsession may actively seek out encounters and situations that are known to trigger strong emotional reactions.”

The article goes on to note that “it can be a scary and dangerous combination” when one is caught up in both political obsession and political polarization.  That’s a dastardly chicken-and-egg cycle indeed.

None of these writeups venture to say what specific behaviors might qualify as a disorder.  Every set of circumstances is different but can mere conversation qualify?  I submit that it can, not based on the side being taken but where there is a predilection toward instigating conversations that aren’t really conversations at all.  Syndrome, disorder, whatever, this tendency is the bane of true conversation.

All in all, there are probably not that many perpetrators.  There are though plenty of us victims.

–Richard Gilman

Next: Dialogue vs. Monologue