Kylie Minogue loves to play Deflection!

This does not seem like the epitome of good-faith debate.

But since you asked. I do answer your questions and answer them on-point as well: just not with the answers you'd prefer to hear, it appears.

Other thing: It appears you assume you have the right to unilaterally control the direction of conversations, but you don't.

Genuine conversations involve two people conversing in good faith. It is the nature of discussions to sometimes move in unexpected directions and end up in a different place than they started. Wherever the conversation leads, the common denominator of a good-faith debate is respect and genuineness.

Hope this helps.

I never asked.

While you do put an effort to return debate and will usually answer back, which I usually respect even from people I argue with or disagree with strongly, you very frequently ignore good points to pick on smaller tangents to muddy the argument. You're not the only one, of course. Or you shift the conversation to pivot to a completely different agenda that you want to push. With a huge dash of disingenuous. I never feel I'm in any degree of a good faith argument with you, which I don't get from any other poster here besides damagedgood and maybe Stanhalen. Even huge trolls like Manhattan, Mad Titan chil out now and then. I get along fairly well with hardcore libs like OM, Darko, Sew and others.

Yet you're different. I mean, you're the only one that gets downvoted on the regular. Maybe it's that you never show a humility that isn't laced with some mockery. Never give an inch, when clearly disproved.

It's probably the lawyer thing.

Now, I'm sure I've wasted my time but whatever. I'm not perfect but even with my trolling in the politics stream, I'm nowhere near as despised as you, as far as I go! The snotty little end rejoiners you sign off with doesn't help... Hope that helps.

Considering deleting the memes I just posted here but I'll wait to see what else I got from you in case you irk me enough.

Take care.

Debating politics is not for the faint of heart. Especially these days. You know that, I know that. Yet it strains credibility to compare my comments to damagedgood and StanHalen-style obtuseness and reeing.

BlueNinja, antithesis, whistlelock and the like are some of the sharpest liberal commenters but it doesn't always earn them universal acclaim either and I've seen them be downvoted.

Octavia_Melody seems to be well-liked, but even he was a regular target of pedophilia allegations several months ago. That crew seems to have gone away to the benefit of ImgFlip.

No one really seems to f**k with Sewmyeyesshut. Good for him.

But let's face it. It's just hostile environment for liberals on politics sometimes.

Many liberals either don't visit the "politics" stream at all, or they don't generally engage in extended conversations. I do. I still believe there is value in talking to the other side, even though social media seems to discourage genuine debate and has a tendency to reward cheap insults (which I do consider myself above) and sarcastic "hot takes" (which I admit I'm not always above).

This is important, though. If we can't recognize each other as Americans and talk to each other like human beings despite our fundamental disagreements, then we won't have a country anymore. It's as simple as that. I love America too much to let that happen -- but nor do I want to see America become a place where racism and bigotry go unchallenged in the interests of false comity. There is a LOT of casual racism and bigotry that goes unchallenged and it pisses me off, so I challenge it. I don't look back and I don't apologize.

I don't see myself as a master of deflection. I do stay on-topic: Except, perhaps, in instances where the topic itself is disingenuous from the get-go: Like, say, a meme about "black-on-black" crime.

No: I'm not going to just accept the premise that blacks are savages who have a tendency to murder each other because that's just how they are and how they'll always be. I'm going to point out why the phrase "black-on-black crime" implies a false and racist narrative, that overlooks important factors like poverty and broken trust with the police force and the strikingly equal tendency of whites to kill each other.