You get to choose your own reality. You get to believe what makes you feel good.  You can ignore inconvenient facts so rigorously that your picture of the world is one big distortion.

And if you can give your foes a collective name - liberals, fundamentalists or neocons - you can rob them of their individual humanity.  All inhibitions are removed. You can say anything about them.  You get to feed off their villainy and luxuriate in your own contrasting virtue.  You will find books, blowhards and candidates playing to your delusions... You can live there unburdened by ambiguity. 

David Brooks of the New York Times