It doesn’t matter what your political position is; reading or watching things that aggressively dispute all that you believe can produce this effect. Often, my whole afternoon is wrecked by reading one article or watching one debate. And that lost afternoon is irretrievable. Those hours I could have spent pursuing my research, or engaging creatively in something, or writing an article like this one, which demonstrates some faith in humanity, are lost because of a morbid attraction to provocative rhetoric and lost causes. But if a pundit screams brutishly in the forest and there is no one there to hear him, does he still make a sound?