When critical thinking is applied selectively, it must not be that critical after all. Critical thinking doesn't have an on/off switch based on convenience or preference. It is mental discipline to evaluate ideas based on their merit, irrespective of the source or packaging. If you apply more scrutiny for others' ideas than your own (or your tribe's), then you are neither a true critical thinker or a free thinker. More likely, you are a motivated or perhaps even a dogmatic thinker. True critical thinking is an equal opportunity challenger that pursues truth, not comfort. The uncomfortable truth is that true critical thinking often leads to 'complexifying' your worldview, more so than simplifying or reinforcing it. It may lead you to kill your thought-darlings and/or embrace more nuance than you originally planned to. And that's ok, since the construction of a superior worldview requires the destruction of an inferior one. Have you ever killed a thought-darling of yours? Have you ever complexified your worldview with much-needed nuance or truth? Have you ever embraced a superior idea, even if the source or packaging was supbar? If so, then you're on the critical path to critical thinking.