Article: How Politics Makes Us Stupid

Over the course of 10 years, as I tried to make sense of the religion I had left (Mormonism) and why I had believed much of it in the first place, I began to deconstruct the very notion of belief and knowledge, starting with the foundational question “what can we know?”

That process gave me a lot of insight into how to change my own life, but also how to understand why many friends and family even refused to engage me in meaningful conversations about the changes I was experiencing. “Knowledge” in a community such as Mormonism has more to do with social standing than it does with facts and figures. And, now that I was outside of the community, I had nothing to offer them.

The understanding of this made my transition into politics easier. The same principles apply in partisan debates. We tend to martial facts that support our position, and our position tends to be crafted to ensure our acceptance within our tribe.

This article explains more of this: How Politics Makes Us Stupid