Scott Alexander

Shouldn't it be in the catalogue?

Wouldn't it be weird if 21st century political extremists had discovered a totally new form of mental dysfunction, unrelated even by analogy to all the forms that had come before?

You'll object.

Politics only metaphorically makes people crazy.

We just use the word crazy here to mean irrational or overly emotional.

I'm not sure that's true.

Here are some stray findings that I think deserve to be synthesized.

This is a list.

Very smart people lose basic reasoning abilities when the topic switches to politics.

This isn't just a truism, it's been demonstrated in formal experiments, link in post.

You can give people simple math or logic problems and confirm that they get the right answers.

Then you can change the wording from five apples and eight oranges to five democrats and eight assault weapons, and these same people will flounder and say idiotic things.

Paranoia and conspiracy theories, considered psychotic symptoms in individuals, are almost the norm in politics.

Forget the people who believe that Biden or Trump or FEMA or whoever literally want to put them in camps.

The coastal elites or the patriarchy or the rich or the liberal media may all be real groups with agendas different from yours, but the way some people think about them actively plotting to dismantle everything good in the world shades into paranoia.

And if you don't believe this about your side, at least consider it on the other.

I'm not just making fun of other people, I find myself making this mistake constantly.

Politics can create such strong emotions that they impair normal social functioning.

People mock college students who demand trigger warnings whenever they have to listen to a conservative speaker.

But I've talked to some of these college students and they're not making it up.