>>11823I think you can have a debate about political issues if you separate them from the larger umbrella of politics under which they fall. For example, you can imagine a fairly straightforward debate about the question: "Should city waste management add an additional garbage truck to the northwest district?" It's pretty straightforward, and anyone can look at the pros and cons. But if you now add a political layer to it, that Party A is fully in favor of it as part of their platform, and Party B is fully opposed as part of their platform, then the simple question of whether the city should purchase an extra garbage truck gets saddled with all of the other unrelated political issues as pertains to the party whose platform your position indirectly supports. Suddenly people are calling out your moral failings and wishing for your death, because you have a position on whether the city should purchase an extra garbage truck or not. The garbage truck question itself is not political, but it has been politicized, and this is the real problem. And to extrapolate from there, things in the modern day have been politicized to an absurd degree, intentionally, to weaponize the resulting tribe mentality against the opposition and/or to shut down debate entirely. Now we can't even talk about the garbage truck question, because doing so is "political", and on a site like Ponyville, politics is generally not allowed to be discussed.
So debating politics? Yes, it's pointless, because if you treat something as political, then it can't be disentangled from the issues associated with it. But if you can debate the issue isolated from the politics surrounding it, then you can have a decent conversation.
