[essayist]

The scissor effect can't apply to an individual. And I suppose if most everyone falls on one side of the question, even with lots of passion, there's no scissor.

But I'm arguing (SSC may not be) that effective scissor statements create both passion and tunnel vision in people, even one at a time. And so when there are people with passion and tunnel vision on both sides, voilà, scissor. (It's a little bit like "drunken mob". You can't have a mob with just one person, but each person, arguably, gets drunk on their own.)