Tim brought up this hilarious classic in an earlier comment. I grabbed it and edited it down in order to share this one thought with you without your having to watch the whole thing. (If you DO want to watch the whole thing, here it is.)

I was particularly struck by this line of Michael Palin’s:

An argument is a collective series of statements to establish a definite proposition.

But of course, our national politics today consist entirely of contradiction. If the fellow in the other party says it, it must be contradicted — and never, never engaged. Because polarization is the end it itself. No one is trying to achieve a new understanding by setting competing positions alongside each other and advancing a synthesis. It’s about saying “no, it isn’t” back and forth.

That’s the sort of thing I was on about back here. And on the Kulturkampf post as well.

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