Why one-sided politics becomes dumb and fantasy-based. By the Z-Man.

The problem with the purging of bad-thinkers is two-fold. One is it boils off anything resembling diversity of thought. Instead of an ongoing debate among equals, it becomes an echo chamber.

The other consequence, something that appears to be a feature of the managerial class, is smart people get purged. The result is a slow decline in cognitive capital. If you are curious and ask too many questions, inevitably you run into conflict with the system. …

But what happens when the bad thinkers are all deplatformed, cancelled, and shadow-banned right out of public life?

One strange result of this loss of an approved alternative is the left-side of the political class is in a panic.

Progressivism in America is now a fully negative identity that needs an enemy to survive. More important, that enemy needs to be compliant. Over the long Cold War, the left-side of the political class evolved to depend on that compliant right-side as its constraint and raison d’etre. This is why it is desperately flailing about trying to create a new version of the old familiar.

So they made up “white supremacists.” The boogey men.