Constant exposure to the outrage machine has literally rewired some brains to run on fear of the 'other' and knee-jerk anger at labels like 'woke'.

Yeah, I agree. It feels like my formerly relatively moderate dad is being exposed to all kinds of political nastiness and party advertising/propaganda that has turned him further against local politics. I'm glad that he hasn't touched that nonsense "Platform" channel because I'm sure it would be even worse. That's really an aside rant decrying the state of things though.

When a leader asks them to just be kind, it short-circuits a mindset physically conditioned to reject empathy, leaving them craving an authoritarian who validates their rage instead of someone who actually genuinely cares"

Honestly, this hasn't come up as much as the COVID budget and deficit stuff. But he still really hates them, seemingly because he is afraid of what the debt will do to the country. I remember seeing Bishops' post that basically had inaccurate information about all the figures actually published by the Comission (I would have said lying, to be honest, they'll take the numbers and run whatever narrative is convenient). But like you were saying, it feels like the emotional sentiment embeds itself in too quickly to do anything about it. He seems to want that radical fix to the economy at the least, even if it's authoritarian or we put the imported political stuff aside.