Recommended:

On debate and discourse:

Yet it is striking how appearance can overwhelm reality. We are being trained that all that really matters is whether it looks like you’re right—not whether you actually are. Or more, it’s not even about seeming to be right, but seeming to be in control, suave, and strong. Words become bludgeons, tools to manipulate. Speakers are reduced to actors, playing a part in a charade.

 

There is of course a place for the art of rhetoric in discourse, especially public discourse. But at the end of the day, discourse is not combat; it should not be about winning but about communication, and coming to some truth

 

It seems that email, comment boxes, and the like have exacerbated the problem.

 

And The End of the Utilitarian Argument for Trump:

 

 

Many conservatives, then, have been making what we can call the utilitarian argument for Trump. They argue that those who appreciate how bad a liberal majority on the Supreme Court would be should recognize that Trump, for all his faults, would be less bad than Clinton, so they ought to vote for Trump

Stated in these terms, this argument has always been too simple and too fast. A vote has lots of effects, only one of which is increasing the probability of a particular candidate’s victory. In particular, all else being equal, the more votes Trump receives, the more people will think that his platform is one that deserves a place in American politics and that his style of politics is worth emulating; it encourages the Republican Party to adopt his views and manner. A Republican vote for Trump will, generally, be taken as a Republican condoning of Trump

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And is that what we want?

Finally, here is the future: The a third party based on solidarity, subsidiarity and distributism.

 

Oremus pro invicem!