The purpose of politics is to make you stupid

Look around you. Everything you see or touch is a three-dimensional object. That means it has six sides. And in relationships with other animals, there are more "sides;" we recognize that not all cats, dogs, or other pets have the same personality. In relationships with fellow human beings, there are far more sides than that.

But in politics, there are supposed to be "two sides." Period. That's why the purpose of politics is to make you stupid. Politics is at war with reality.

Politics boils down infinitely complicated issues into "good" and "bad," and seeks to ban the bad. It doesn't work. It never works, and can't work.

Take the Iraq War. The issue was portrayed as, you support the United States or you support a murderous dictator. You had to ignore everything else, especially the political, cultural, and religious dynamics within the artificially-created "nation" of Iraq. The interests of Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds, the ideologies of secular Ba'athists and radical Islam, were ALL to be ignored. It was Saddam or US.

You had to take one of two sides, when there were many sides.

Today, most issues are still like this. Such as...

• You side with the bigot, or you side with members of a minority group in discrimination laws.
• You want campaign finance regulations, or you want corrupt politics.
• You want government to do something about climate change, or you're a global warming "denier."

In every such instance, those who want more State coercion have at most one fact to "prove" their point, and then shout down those who disagree as enemies of all that is good and just, even when opponents produce equally-verifiable facts that complicate the issue.

When they think they're tolerant, they will say, "Let's have equal time. Let both sides be heard."

Actually, there are probably, at minimum, six sides to any controversial political issue. Perhaps dozens, with just one or two advocating more coercion, others wanting the status quo, and still others wanting more freedom and less coercion.

So when somebody who pretends to be fair-minded claims he wants "both sides" to be heard, he's probably trying to dumb you down, or is so dumb-downed himself he doesn't even know how narrow-minded he is.