The point here is that we have a significant segment of the population that is no longer able to answer the question "What do you think/believe/feel/judge?" by saying what it is they really actually think or believe or feel or judge. Their response to any question is to calculate what that question means in terms of the zero-sum game and then to offer the answer they think will be strategically best for scoring points in that game.

This is a fundamentally disingenuous way of talking, voting and living and it's not possible to approach all those things disingenuously without that dishonesty and duplicity coming to shape, stunt and distort one's own thinking.

Constantly arguing in bad faith leads to thinking in bad faith and
to living in bad faith, until bad faith is all you've got left. Calculation becomes habit, that habit supplants thought and one winds up in the perverse circumstance of earnestly arguing for the goodness of oil spills.