In a political discourse, if someone isn’t trying to debate, they’re attempting to exercise power. That is where a large fraction of American political life has gone off the rails. It’s there in comment threads all the time; where one person attempts to have a rational discussion, and the other screams non sequiturs, ad hominem attacks, and declares how the other guy did it so that invalidates your argument but not their own.
That’s the difference between arguing to reach consensus and a solution to a given problem, and arguing to exercise power. Things suck not because of the Internet, not because of “Fake News,” and not because of those evil Russian hackers… It sucks because political debate is not debate anymore, it’s an exercise in power and virtue signaling to one’s own tribe. When you argue your point of view for the sake of power, rather than to convince people, you do not actually convince people. Funny that.
Ask yourself if the following exemplar of the form does anything other than try and beat up the author’s enemies with a rhetorical stick: “America is Held Hostage by Flyover States“.