If every person in favor of repealing the Affordable Care Act is framed as a monster who wants people to die, the conversation is basically over before it even starts.
If every person who votes for a democrat is framed as a baby-killer who cares about ____ more than they care about life, the conversation is basically over before it starts.
It’s the dialogical equivalent of “have you stopped beating your wife?” as an opening line of question.
If you can’t state your opponent’s perspective in words that they would agree with, it is functionally impossible to have a dialogue about it. You can talk around each other, but you can’t have a dialogue. You can probably even sell a lot of books or radio advertisements, but you can’t actually have a conversation until you admit that the other side is full of people. Real human people.
If the other side only hears (shrilly) from you that they are trying to kill a group of people, it’s likely that they’ll stop listening. Nobody wants to enter a conversation where they are the villain.
…and now you know one main reason why I don’t talk politics online.