The more left wingers double down on "Trump is dangerous" and other arguments, the less I believe them. Am I desensitized or just skeptical? When Charles Blow writes “Mr. Trump, you’re an example of the worst of humanity,” does everyone believe that?

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The ‘echo chamber’ effect of politics is what turned me off to it all throughout my twenties. Now in my thirties I have better filters and a better understanding of how the world works so it doesn’t bug me so much as fascinate me.

It’s interesting to me that so many people see the political world in terms of ‘left-wingers’ and ‘right-wingers’. As if all that any particular candidate has to offer is party affiliation. I view this as mostly a problem of time poverty. We just don’t have time to become responsible, informed participants in the political process. It takes time to cultivate information sources, to develop opinions, to read and digest current events.

Second, it takes a lot of social skill to be able to have a political conversation with someone who doesn’t think about the world the same way you do. If you’re talking about cooking, and someone wants to add seasoning to a pot of boiling pasta water, you don’t call them stupid for not knowing that salt and fat are the only things you can really put in there that will have an effect on the noodles. You just say those go into the sauce. But with politics, everyone seems perfectly content with being snarkily insulting. And worse, their proclivity towards insult inevitably directly correlates with the unoriginality of their thought. If you’re not on my bandwagon you’re a complete fucking moron and go away.

So it’s easy to dismiss political herd behavior as being stupid. But there’s a danger in letting that behavior influence your political beliefs. It’s that it makes you more self-confirming, and less original in the long run. You’re less likely to see that same behavior happening on your ‘side’.