Political epistemologists, social psychologists, and others have sought to make sense of the prevalence of beliefs that conflict with expert consensus on politically charged topics. This chapter begins by making the case that this project would benefit from understanding how the process of politicization affects the epistemic landscape. It provides a model on which a politicized landscape is one in which one’s stance on an inherently nonpolitical topic signals a political stance and, given one’s assessment of the costs, it makes sense to engage in socially adaptive rather than truth-tracking cognition on the nonpolitical issue. The paper ends by considering how this bears on trust and the influence of social media on political opinions.