General Political Stupidity

I've been trying identify the causes of political stupidity that are independent of sides. Two the commonest causes are: 1) the belief that there are only two sides; 2) ignoring the possibility of change.

If there only two sides …

If there are only two sides, politics becomes a zero-sum game. Anything done to the other side will not backfire and you will not offend potential allies. In addition, anybody dissenting from your platform must be a traitor.

If change won't happen…

If change won't happen, you can get away with treating human beings as chess pieces to be moved off, on, or around the board as desired and who won't actually react to that.

“High” and “increasing” are synonyms; “low” and “decreasing” are synonyms.

Today's anything can be projected into the indefinite past and future. You can assume historical controversies can be easily mapped onto today's.

Variation: Anything that does change, changes in the direction favorable to our side's argument.

Other causes

There are other causes. For example, there the always popular belief that pointing to the existence of a problem means the solution you're offering will work.

There's also the belief that to determine the importance of anything, you can multiply its maximum extent by its maximum intensity.