Sorry I didn't see this response earlier. Yes, extremism to me does feel orthogonal to political orientation. "Delusional centrist" is closer to what I had in

Sorry I didn't see this response earlier. Yes, extremism to me does feel orthogonal to political orientation. "Delusional centrist" is closer to what I had in mind. Here's the thing that I think is important: you can't talk to extremists rationally. Their mental world model doesn't match reality in big chunks, so there's no shared world view to agree on. Perhaps I am redefining "extremist" but that's just my mental model.