one thing that was always pretty mortifying was the nerdish propensity for overstatement -- "best. thing. ever." -- because it signified such a desperation to be heard. to employ hyperbole as a signifier that I was here first, I loved it best. (or conversely,

"worst. thing. ever." to signify "I am the Most Harmed by this," "Die in a Fire," "Clean all the Things.") all of these are pretty skin-crawling from the outside of them and it's always been tough to see through the squint they produce

And on the left I see the same transparent need to stand on the top of the hill by overstating more than anyone else one's passion for the project by the same kind of reductive hyperbole. do you have qualms about Elizabeth Warren? You're like a little baby -- I think she's a nazi

or whatever it is. there is a lack of nuance that causes a weird race to the bottom that thinks it's to the top -- but which from the outside is almost unbearably cringeworthy. And it occurs to me that along with newfound expertise in political science, the worst among us on the

left may also be unfamiliar with this particular rhetorical move, or the kind of intellectual infancy it signifies. It is okay to prefer one candidate over another without needing to scream louder than everyone else that you get it, you love A more than B, because what people

don't understand is that B is to the right of Trump, actually. Anyone who has run in geek circles has seen this kind of fandom and how it operates, but outside those I don't know that you can get the proper inoculation against it. It's just so embarrassing to watch, especially if

and when you agree with the person's point. It's such a sneaky way of making things about yourself that a lot of folks probably can't catch themselves doing it. but you know it when you see it. and I think a lot of the talk about "demonizing" sounds very "both sides" if you are

caught in that trap. But it's really not about both sides, it's about your side not requiring the rhetorical fat you're adding to it -- about the childish, hysterical Mean Girl way you can go from "I have questions about Biden" to "so you love Trump," or (and this is where I lose

you) from "I wonder if Biden would really be the worst thing in the world" to "oh, so you love it when people die without healthcare." It's the same exact dorky move and it undercuts your -- very correct -- point. it's a competitive emphasis, which poisons most discourse, but

with something as crucial and vital and passion-inspiring as the future of our country both immediate and long-term... what's the point? if you're stretching the rules of the conversation that far beyond the bounds it stops being a conversation and becomes a competition

of the most toxic sort. it's a pissing match: who can prove their dedication to the cause by the most absurdly stretched-out opinion. I don't believe in horseshoe theory but I do believe... for example M Cushman, who is embarrassingly dorky anyway, but who is locked in by his own

heightened rhetoric into a horrible spiral of always topping his own overstatements, and ends up saying things that are in reality no less stupid or gross than anything Jen Kirkman said, or the alligator lady. if your discourse rests on oneupmanship, you are paving your own road

toward the Warren v Bannon idiocy last week. but it's merely a symptom of the way dedication can become competitive, and that it's hard to resist the illusory value of hyperbole when the world around us is so hyperbolic. and when the "objective" & "rational" among us are so used

to thinking of their own distorted emotion & cognition as representing the true reality from which everyone else is deviating. those true things add up to a meaningless conversation. one with a real price.

tl;dr we deserve & need a reset I don't believe we'll ever get.