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The role of anger and fear in politics is not new, former U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent ’93G told the audience gathered in Baker Hall in Zoellner Arts Center on Tuesday evening. Anger, Dent said, has always motivated and energized voters. “That's what gets a lot of people out to the polls,” he explained.

What is new, Dent continued, is that anger has been “effectively monetized by the political right and the left. It’s all about ratings, clicks, eyeballs and market share. That’s the name of the game. And conservatives have been particularly effective at this, and I think the left is catching up. But we're talking about big money, and that's driving a lot of the anger, and there's a lot of money to be made in this. Anger on the right and the left are both driving the politics of disruption, not just in the U.S., but, I would argue, throughout the Western world...This is not unique to the United States.”

Dent presented the 2020 Kenner Lecture, “A View from the Trenches: The Politics of Anger and What Challenges Centrist Problem Solvers,” describing what he called “the wretched state of American politics, driven so much by anger and fear.”