"This post actually belongs in Mysteries of the Universe."

Not really, Eri. It is perfectly relevant to what's in the news today.

Spirituality and politics need not be oxymoronic. Political ideologies have much in common with religious movements, and as we can see today, are often associated intimately with them. I believe that in their more extreme forms, both have their origins in the same part of the lizard brain.

For the ideologue, as for any True Believer, the ideology is not merely a means to organize a society more justly, or efficiently. It is a fundamental truth, a dogma which must be strictly adhered to and not even the tiniest deviation from it must be tolerated. The Cause has its prophets, its saints, its martyrs, its devils, and its scripture. Heaven is what its followers promise, Hell is the inevitable result of their opponents' program. The believer instantly adopts this glassy-eyed stare and monotonous singsong voice when he begins reciting the catalog of commandments or carefully edited history of his movement, usually in a stylized dialect and vocabulary fully comprehensible only to his fellow believers.

For the zealot, politics is not just a way to run a government, or an economy.
It is tied to morality, virtue, patriotism, and the very nature of good and evil, natural law, and scientific fact. It asks its followers to adopt all sorts of behaviors and beliefs totally unrelated and irrelevant to public administration.

And as we have seen, they treat their opponents as someone who either needs to have their noses rubbed in filth, or shot on sight.