What are the odds that half of the people in America are basically deluded and vicious, while the other half are basically well-informed and well-intentioned? (1/12)

Add to that: what are the odds that the good ones just happen to be on the side you chose, probably long ago when you were young, probably under the influence of your peers and parents? (2/12)

How did so many people on the other side get to be so bad? To explain it, you'd have to posit some combination of mob psychology as assisted by media manipulation. (3/12)

OK, but then how would you explain how so many people on the side you happened to choose are exempt from the same pressures and resilient in the face of them? (4/12)

You could explain how your side came to different conclusions through a different kind of mass psychology and media manipulation. But that doesn't explain how so many on your side are any better than the other side. It only explains the difference. (5/12)

The odds that you just happened to choose the miraculously resilient team back when you were young are not very good. (6/12)

It's far more likely that *most* of the people on the other side are not as deluded and vicious as you want to think... (7/12)

...and that most of the people on the side you've chosen are not as well-informed and well-intentioned as you want to think--even though the way they talk and live seems so familiar to you. (8/12)

It's far more likely that both sides of the culture have the same kind of cultural sickness which pressures people to join a tribe and to be blind to its flaws. (9/12)

If that's right, this doesn't mean you should stop taking stands on issues. It doesn't mean no one can make themselves immune to the sickness. (10/12)

It does mean that immunity is difficult to achieve and therefore rare, and you should fight hard against the temptation to think one team is far and away better than the other, and that you've got to join one for the sake of opposing the other. (11/12)

All of this is especially true in the middle of a crisis, when emotions are running high, and you really want to blame the other side for all the problems in the world. (12/12)