Politics compromises rational thought

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for April 9, 2025)

If you know someone's biases, you can fool them into believing almost anything as long as it aligns with those biases. Politicians are good at this because their victims self-select to listen to the politicians who appeal to their biases. People who are emotionally invested in a specific political ideology are particularly susceptible to influence.

They are primed to be manipulated.

If you think it is only a tactic the other side uses, you've fallen for the same scam. Your politics have made it impossible to think clearly or reason.

Part of this is because politics affects the brain just like a drug. It ruins rational thought; it destroys inhibitions.

If you're already inclined to value safety, nationalism, equity, "law and order", diversity, or any other political ideology, you can be made to embrace atrocities as long as you believe the absurdities you're served.

You might be against theft, but if the political side you identify with calls it a "tax" or a "tariff", you will accept it. You won't see the hypocrisy. You may even be enthusiastic, thinking in this case, it's a good thing.

You probably know kidnapping is an evil act, but if politicians call it "arrest" and say the victim did something to deserve it- like violate a rule which no one has the right to impose, against doing something every human has a natural right to do- then you can feel secure about being the good guy. You've lost your natural inhibitions under the influence of an intoxicant.

See what happens if you go into an airport and start groping crotches without calling yourself "TSA"; claiming it's about "security", and wearing their costume. A sexual assault is still a sexual assault, even if a rule makes it mandatory and places the perpetrators above justice. Only political intoxication could blind someone to the truth.

There's probably no crime- no rights violation- that doesn't have a political twin which is accepted because politicians have made it legal or mandatory. Those who support them will ignore the crime because it aligns with their biases.

Political bias prevents you from thinking clearly and makes you easy to manipulate. It causes you to do things you would otherwise know aren't right. It causes you to tolerate things which are intolerable, as long as you are biased toward those things to begin with. No one is a better person because of their political intoxication.

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