Why Politics is Making Everyone Stupider

Reason, decency, and relationships are perishing at the hands of partisan politics.

I’m not the first person to comment on the rise in political polarisation over the past decade.

Regardless of political leaning, everybody with a hint of perception has noticed an uptick in politically-fueled division and hostility in recent years. And it’s not just in one country, but many.

Mainstream media pundits, independent media pundits, and politicians themselves lament the polarisation that they’re largely responsible for. Those on the right blame the left, those on the left blame the right, and the far-right and the far-left blame their preferred scapegoats.

Nobody blames themselves, of course. Convenient.

If this phenomenon was limited to the halls of power or just the internet, then it would still be an issue, but excessive fragmentation has real-world consequences. Millions of families have been divided, friends lost, and careers destroyed, all because somebody had the ‘wrong’ politics in the eyes of another.

Incredibly, some people celebrate and encourage this. After all, falling out with your ‘communist libtard’ sister or your ‘MAGA Nazi’ father is understandable. Isn’t it?

After all, if they don’t share your exact worldview or voted for a different candidate to you, then the only reason must be that they’re evil, hateful, and bigoted. Who cares if their day-to-day lives and how they actually treat people suggests otherwise?

I’m being facetious.

While I know that genuine extremists exist (usually radicalised by the aforementioned media and political influences), how likely is it that your beloved family member or childhood friend suddenly became a hateful person who ‘literally wants people to die’?

How likely is it that ~50% of your fellow civilians and neighbours are raging bigots, and became so just in the past few years?

Does that seem plausible?

If it does, then perhaps it’s you who has become the extreme, intolerant one.

After all, let’s remember what the word ‘bigot’ actually means:

“A person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices.”

The definition is not:

“A person who votes Republican”

“A person who votes Democrat”

“A person who voted for Brexit”

“A person who voted Remain (in the EU)”

…or anything like it.

There is no mention of any particular political or religious orientation. A bigot is simply someone who is incredibly zealous about their own beliefs and biases, and intolerant of other people’s ways of life and viewpoints.

Unless you’ve managed to lock yourself tightly into an echo chamber, you’ll know that this trait is not unique to any particular ‘side’ of the political aisle.

Critical thinking, civility, honesty, and morality itself are in peril as people increasingly shift toward political obsession and partisanship.

Making politics the focus of your life and the lens through which you view the world leads to a loss of personal accountability and kindness. It causes people to develop victim mentalities, where they seek to blame other people for everything that goes wrong in their lives.

I see different versions of this every day online.