I wouldn't think there's just one pendulum that governs how people view an issue either but there's certainly a continuum for how emotional people will get over

I wouldn't think there's just one pendulum that governs how people view an issue either but there's certainly a continuum for how emotional people will get over certain issues. Obviously if you have no emotion over an issue you won't care one way or the other but if anyone gets too emotional they're much more likely to be irrational, cave to bias and tune out altering view points. Most people on this site are aware that objectivity and not caving to their own bias isn't easy and, more or less, requires constant effort and that is the same kind of effort that should be promoted amongst the public at large. As almost anybody here could tell you, just because something feels true certainly does not make it true but we seem to relish a culture that seems to believe that person's emotions should never be challenged and doing so is merely cruel rather than, at times, necessary. Just because confronting bias is hard to do, and may hurt someone's feelings, doesn't mean that that bias should be ignored, or worse promoted. I'm not talking about whether or not conservatives, liberals, libertarians or whoever else is right but instead challenging the notion that what we need to promote more civic engagement is to tell people what is going on in the country and the world in a manner they want to hear it. What we should be doing is telling people what is going in the world and country in a manner that actually is and at the same time the public needs to be calling out demagogues for what they are and understanding why they are dangerous.