reliably devolves into crap, because the goal is not to further understanding or enlightenment as one would do if one were discussing something concrete like how cancer cells mutate, but rather to further some political goal that underlies the conversation. So it's not honest to begin with. The goal is: I want my guy to win and I will distort everything you say or do in furtherance of that goal.

Not that long ago, my husband and I watched the movie The Best of Enemies about the blood feud between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley - conservative versus liberal during the 1968 political season. What struck us both was that while there were plenty of personal jabs and bon mots, the participants tried to keep their arguments grounded in logic overall. We found it so interesting that we started to watch a few old Firing Line episodes on Netflix or Amazon. We were pretty much amazed at how people of vastly different political persuasions were still able to sit in the same room and have debate/argument about ISSUES and remain polite. Look up some ancient Meet the Press tapes and you'll find the same thing is true. At least the participants had the self awareness and honor not to be willing to push points that were recognizably different from recent common shared experience. They didn't attempt to rewrite history in real time. I simply can't respect people who spin and frame when I KNOW they know better. Low information, low curiosity, bad reasoning is one thing, deliberate manipulation of facts is another.