The role of a culture is to allow for the free expression of emotion, as channeled by cultural habit. There are places, ways, times to emote. Whenever you see a culture which has the reputation for being spontaneous and warm–say the Spanish and Italians, or even the Arabs–you will also see cultural conservatism, robust Catholicism, or Islamic belief and practice.
If you look at the Swedes, say, they are cold, intellectual, distant. This actually means there is a large swelling of emotion in them, but not expressed, not processed, not present but merely latent. Such groundswells, such floods, lead people in all sorts of directions which make no sense, because nothing they feel is expressed easily or openly, least of all to their own consciousnesses.
In America, we are awash in consumerism, in habitual where not addictive media consumption–most of all sex and violence. We are addicted to work, to “fun”, but have grown to lack a shared framework for the expression of experience.
The whole Trump Derangement Personality Disorder (as I have decided to call it) consists in a way OUT for oceans of feeling. You have masses of people who have denied themselves obvious and simple love of country, expressed as patriotism. They have denied themselves pride in their past or present. They are by and large emotionally alienated, which makes their belonging to the Leftist cult a matter of intense personal need. Without that, without that belonging, they have nothing. This generates a terrifying latent fear of rejection and being left out. This, in turn, creates the stimulus for shared, group, hate, even when–as it plainly is here–it is thoroughly, even determinedly, irrational.
Feelings are always there. If you are not aware of them, they are driving you. Even if you think you are distant from feelings, cold, calculating, rational, logical, they are driving you. Most of all when you think they are doing nothing.