A bit more - what you wrote is exactly the typical case I have seen almost exclusively across the spectrum for many boards/sites. And Reddit in particular is e

A bit more - what you wrote is exactly the typical case I have seen almost exclusively across the spectrum for many boards/sites. And Reddit in particular is especially guilty of this. It shouldn't really surprise anyone, though, given that Silicon Valley leans hard to the left - they are in charge of some of these non-media owned discussion sites like Reddit. Just look at the recent case of Facebook hiding conservative news from the feed. Of course they claim it was a few "rogue employees". Sure, I believe that. And as for discussions on Reddit or news websites, the typical tactic I see over and over is as soon as anyone who is in the minority viewpoint is starting to make any sort of sense, commenters whip out the laundry list of go-to techniques for intellectually dishonest attacks - name-calling, stereotyping, questioning motives, questioning knowledge/expertise/credentials, using incorrect assumptions and false premises, straw man attacks, claiming facts are just opinions, use of weasel words, or (my personal favorite) the claim of having "rights" that are not in fact rights at all (surprisingly common). None of these crap tactics address either incorrect facts or incorrect logic, which are the only two things that should matter. It's amazing to me how ugly things have become. And it's not just politics. Go to virtually ANY youtube video with more than a few thousand views and read the comments. There are an inordinate amount of hateful/angry posts, even for the most subjective things like music. And somehow anything related to news devolves into a political debate.