Politics & Power Quote by Major Owens

Owens is not trying to persuade you with policy; he’s trying to reframe what counts as “mainstream.” By saying these values are “spawned by the vocal and highly visible Republicans,” he targets not the entire party apparatus but the megaphone: the faction that sets the emotional weather of the moment. “Vocal” and “highly visible” is a critique of agenda-setting itself, a warning that intensity and media presence can launder extremity into normalcy.

The phrase “appeal to the worst in people” is deliberately unspecific, which is the point. Owens is naming a moral mechanism rather than litigating a platform: politics that wins by activating resentment, fear, and grievance. It’s a condemnation of a certain kind of political entrepreneurship - the conversion of private ugliness into public identity. The vagueness also functions as an invitation: listeners fill in the “worst” with whatever they’ve watched get rewarded lately, from scapegoating immigrants to demonizing the poor, from racialized “law and order” to contempt for pluralism.

“Our society is moving in that direction” widens the blast radius. Owens is arguing that the real danger isn’t a single election or party; it’s cultural drift. When the loudest voices get attention, they don’t just reflect public sentiment - they train it. In that sense, the line reads less like partisan sniping and more like a diagnosis of feedback loops: media incentives, political branding, and the slow normalization of cruelty as authenticity.