Excuse me for not going back to check if these cut/paste hacks were entire posts or not. Does anyone really care? A shotgun blast of BS is bad form regardless.

IMHO, the best forum for political discussions is climbing up a long hot dusty trail when every word takes effort, and you're heading toward the same destination. If you strip away the party affiliations and the echo chambers, and get down to the basics, people are not all that different. But it's not easy to get past all that when there's so much money to be made by getting people all stirred up.