Is there any point in discussing politics?

I was about to start another topic called "The Fallacies of Socialism" (or something like that), but after a few discussions I am beginning to wonder if it is at all worth discussing politics anymore, here or anywhere else.

Much like religion, we each all seem to have made up our minds beforehand on all the issues. I, for example, have pretty much determined to be a Libertarian, in all issues, political, societal and economic. Others here are die hard anarchists, socialists, even communists, but most others support mixed economic and political models with confused philosophical fundaments. After countless exchanges of posts, I have seen very little if any, of any changes regarding ideological positions from any of us.

I have noticed all kinds of strategic and tactical ways to try to convince the others. Some use long winding rants, like thefugitivesaint, others quick and short to the point posts like DChicken. Some try to use irony like MadMordigan, other only limit themselves to rebuttals like LorenPetchel. Still others like to start a lot of highly contraversial topics like wicket, August Spies or J.M. Everyone presents "evidence" by providing links to news reports, pictures, quotes, books from famous economists, statistics, lessons from atistics, lessons from history etc, but just the same, everyone who opposes what this evidence starkly shows, quickly retorts that it is biased, distorted, antiquated, does not apply to the discussion, etc.

The tactic I find most despicable is to resort to a personal attack sometimes very subtly but most of the times very buntly like saying "what an idiot", "your stupidity is confirmed", etc, with the inevitable rolling eye smilie. Personally whenever I get these ad hominem attacks, I quit the discussion of the topic by telling myself that they have lost the argument and are resorting to desperate tactics. Another cheap tactic, which I confess I use alot, is to portray the opposing ideology as dogmatic, utopic, unrealistic, and religious like.

For me it has been fun learning other's ideas and confirming my capitalistic and libertarian ideologies. I am sure for some others too. Still, I wonder if some of us stubbornly continue to be deluded into trying to convince others to think like one's self.

Maybe there are a lot of lurkers critically thinking each of our positions and modifying their own ideologies maybe even unconsciously. But since they themselves aren't so set in their political thinking I imagine that they aren't so quick to point out their differences, so we will never know if we are actually "convincing" anyone.

I sure miss a lot of the intelligent posters who have suddenly left the board even if they vehemently disagreed with me. I wonder if they reached the same conclusion.

Originally posted at the Internet Infidels