Pat’s Polemics

When you are loggerheads politically with someone there are two paths to take:
you can try to persuade the other that you are right and vice verse. That can work unless the other’s opinion, pov, position derives from an ideology e.g. political (Marxism), religious (Dominion Christianity), cultural (The Council of Elders), etc. In this case, persuasion is read as an attack; only acceptance of the other’s view as correct will avoid the sense, on their part, that you are attacking them (see the sense many have that Christianity is “under attack” – I had the good fortune to wade into it with a minister who finally boiled it down to IRS guidelines on separation of church and state that called for a toning down of attacks on gays from the pulpit).
The other approach is compromise, is compromise is possible (see above). That is really hard, painful, bruising and therefore requires tact, courtesy, mutual respect…. all hard to carry out in the day-to-day tumult of politics.