The idea that "everything is getting politicized" is more often an expression of the loss of normative dominance: ideas that you used to enjoy free of criticism

The idea that "everything is getting politicized" is more often an expression of the loss of normative dominance: ideas that you used to enjoy free of criticism and pushback are now subject to challenge. They haven't become politicized, they were always political. You just didn't have to justify them versus criticism. The only sense in which horseshoe theory is real is that the rejection of the status quo tends to split someone in one direction or the other, and occasionally those new to alternative political ideologies will waffle or get shunted down different pipelines. Example: younger people going down the IDW pipeline who end up socialist once they realize the error. They don't return to dominant liberal narratives because they already figured out the ways in which they are toxic and false, and they also reject their previous pathway. I can't imagine thinking that "bizarro world" is one in which people hold a larger diversity of opinion and criticize within a party.