I don't know. I personally know people that lost their minds because of an election. Completely well off people, whose lives are not affected at all by national politics, apart from slight changes in tax rates. They live in a state and city that shares their politics. They're isolated from everything on the national level.

Yet some of these people have rearranged their entire lives around a singular politician. Ended relationships, moved, started therapy or medication.

It happens on both sides and its pretty sad.

What else would you call that?

People generally do not come up with absurd beliefs all on their own, those do spread like a virus and as a consequence of all that social contagion, they do not seem all that absurd anymore to the person who contracts them.

i prefer 'mind-killer', myself.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9weLK2AJ9JEt2Tt8f/politics-i...

Talk like this is never apolitical. No political change can occur without discussion first and therefore preemptively dismissing political discussion is inherently an endorsement of the current power structures.

There is no way to actually discuss this specific story without discussing politics. A president pardoning someone is an inherently political act and that is only emphasized when it was done on his first day in office and with a statement that includes lines like "The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me." That is all part of the story of what happened here and it involves politics whether you like it or not.

Yes let's use word that need massive essays to explain what one person believes they mean... Like "woke". And not just stick to words we know the meaning of. That surely aid the discussion. /s