Say you open the newspaper, flip on the tube, or click to your go-to news source. You see the opposition up to something which disgusts you. "Those people are idiots!", you think to yourself.
Question: What would they be like if they weren't idiots?
If your response is along the lines of "Well, then they would stop saying X and doing Y," then all well and good.
But if your response, whether articulated or pre-verbal, is "If they weren't idiots, they would be more like me," then, you're an idiot.