“Facts don’t care about your feelings,” said conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. The phrase, which made its way from the far-right into mainstream media, led Shapiro to a book deal with the same name, and epitomizes everything the right does well.
Liberals are emotional, overly sensitive and obsessed with cancel culture. Conservatives are honest, logical and don’t hesitate to speak the truth that everyone else is purportedly too scared to voice — at least as the Republican Party frames it.
President Donald Trump rose to power for many reasons; among them, his perceived sincerity. He wasn’t a likable candidate, though neither was Hillary Clinton, but to many voters, he was authentic. The president’s unrelatable trust fund, Wharton degree and celebrity status were disregarded by the predominantly middle and lower class voting bloc that brought him to power, attracted by his brash demeanor and populist rhetoric.
Trump’s 2016 win redefined the Republican Party, but recharacterized their opposition to an even greater extent. The Democratic Party is seen, now more than ever, as not only elitist and out of touch but also overly concerned with wokeness and cultural sensitivity, often paramount to real issues affecting Americans.
As Nicholas Kristof explained in a New York Times article on his rural Oregon hometown,
“My neighbors, struggling to pay the rent and buying gas $5 at a time, often perceive national Democrats as remote elites more eager to find them pronouns than housing.”
In a similar vein, the Republican Party’s unsubstantiated claims of undocumented people stealing jobs from working-class Americans are predicated upon the idea that the left’s empathy is primarily extended towards immigrants, not blue-collar America.
As the left grows increasingly defined by issues of immigration, transgender athletes in sports and ‘woke culture,’ which few seem to explicitly define, the right is effectively able to claim ownership of logic and reason.
As Camille Paglia wrote in her feminist essay collection “Free Women, Free Men,” “It is usually men rather than women who claim logic’s superiority to emotion. This they comically tend to do at moments of maximum emotional chaos, which they may have incited.”
This assertion can be further applied to the Trump administration’s actions in blue states, most recently with the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul region.
In the past month, ICE has shattered car windows, pepper-sprayed civilians and dragged people from their vehicles. The high-profile deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, both of which were ruled homicides, are two out of at least eight people who have been killed by ICE or died in its custody in 2026 alone.
The major infliction of violence on this region has been further exploited by the same administration perpetuating it. In mid-January, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem posted an AI-doctored photo of an arrested protester, altered to make the Black woman appear to be sobbing as well as darkening her skin.
And while the federal government claims to be targeting “criminal aliens,” they recently detained not only a father but his five-year-old son Liam Conejo Ramos, sending them to an ICE detention center in Texas.
When asked about these actions against an innocent child, Vice President JD Vance defended the decision.
“The story is that ICE detained a five-year-old. Well, what are they supposed to do?” Vance posited, after prefacing that he had just learned about the situation while leaving an “economic event.”
“Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death?” Vance further explained that the child’s father was an “illegal alien,” and not arresting those with children, as he illustrated, “doesn’t make any sense.”
“I’m proud of the fact that we’re enforcing this country’s laws,” Vance said.
Omitting any background information whatsoever, perhaps the vice president’s argument can hold ground. And to many viewers whose research stopped after this press conference, Vance may be the voice of reason in an emotionally charged situation.
Yet in context, Vance’s claims were misleading to the point of disinformation. At the time of his detention, Ramos’ family members as well as school officials were pleading with ICE agents to release the five-year-old, invalidating Vance’s assertions of the necessity of the arrest.
This situation further amplifies a pattern from the right: depicting the left, sometimes literally, as overly concerned with emotion and social injustice. In contrast, the Republican Party can claim a platform devoted to law and order, logic and rationality, even in controversial situations.
While the right can claim that facts don’t leave room for feelings, it is worth noting that this sentiment is only used when it benefits conservatives.
Following his 2020 election loss, Donald Trump and fellow supporters claimed widespread election fraud despite having no evidence to support their allegations. Further lacking corroboration, Trump planted seeds of doubt regarding mail-in voting and voter identification laws.
“I have a feeling judges are going to have to rule,” Trump said during a White House press conference as votes continued to be counted. As his claims of election fraud continued, facts remained absent.
I doubt any Minnesotan, regardless of political affiliation, is claiming to be emotionally unaffected by the violence perpetrated across the Twin Cities. And this should be the case — a region torn apart by unconstitutional, government-endorsed brutality will inevitably be impacted.
And simultaneously, they are not abandoning logical principles. Displays of anger and sadness do not detract from the validity of these situations as immoral, unethical or, in this case, downright illegal.
Expressions of emotions do not antithesize logic and reason. Reactions to inflicted violence do not undermine the gravity of these situations. Rather, the emotion incited by attacks on ourselves and our neighbors should serve to further motivate our resistance.