[gajomi]

>It really made me question just how many people who happen to share my political positions, do so because they genuinely understand and agree with the policies, and not because it's just what you're supposed to do when you have a certain identity (liberal etc).

Its worth thinking about how well reasoned and deeply researched justifications of positions make headway in a democracy. Expert opinion is expensive to acquire and not accessible to the majority. In a hierarchy of coalitions information is potential compressed at every level. If it gets compressed enough it might just end up as a left versus right or up versus down issue, with the justification for this reasoning only accessible by traversing up and down the hierarchy. I am not sure that this is a bad thing, butI can appreciate your concern about causes of an individuals motivation, especially in light of the potential for a propaganda apparatus to insert itself into my aforedescribed idealization.