“Hate makes you stupid.”

Say that to a hundred people and a hundred will agree. Prejudice blinds, as all of us know from personal experience. No one treats hate as intellectually ennobling—except perhaps Kanye West.

It’s the human condition, however, to recognize that hatred impairs acuity but to succumb to it anyway. There’s a lot of hate flowing through American politics nowadays, you may have noticed, the widely known stupefying effects of that hate notwithstanding.

Which brings me to a confession: I’m prejudiced. I think some of you might be as well. And I worry that our prejudice is making us stupider at times than we should be.