Politicization of factual issues is making it so we cannot have a clear, honest debate in the slightest.
For instance: Oil. Should we keep digging up oil in every way we can, or should we pursue alternative energy sources? Well, to help combat global warming...
STOP! Already you're taking a liberal stance -- that GLOBAL WARMING EXISTS! Already the conservatives know to stop listening. (I'm generalizing here when I say "liberal" and "conservative", but for the exact same reason that this is a problem -- for many people this is a political issue, not a factual one).
Okay, so we just leave global warming out of the equation altogether. Well, oil is a valuable source of energy, and if we keep using it up in all its ways, we'll have enough time to manufacture more of it scientifically... so we need to engage in fracking, which involves basically blowing fissures into the earth to get more oil, which can cause ecological and environmental issues... STOP!
Worrying about environmental issues makes you a liberal. Damnit, stop doing that!
Er, okay. Well, we COULD pursue alternative forms of energy. Of course, it's more expensive now, but as it's invested in and adopted more widely, it would become cheaper and we'd develop better methods of doing so. But we'd need to invest -- STOP!
Now we come to another general conservative talk point. To invest in it, you'd have to do so with the free market, not with subsidies. If you needed to subsidize it, that means it would necessarily fail; the market is always right, and if it doesn't work in the market, it would fail. Okay, I mean, we subsidize oil as well, and oil relies on a lot of lobbyists to keep oil free in the government, but that's using hard-earned money from business...
You see where this all starts to fall apart as a debate? It's a huge tangle; you can't argue the general point without people rabidly attacking each other's throat about any particular point (and yes, I know, I admit my bias here, but it's a bias based on what I've seen and looked into regarding the subject... but yes, I do have a particular viewpoint).
There's no way a dialogue of this ONE subject can have any hope of getting resolved without extreme levels of partisanship... unless people were to take science seriously and take the effort to look into that science. But very few people are. Most go off what they know from the mainstream populace about it -- they "ditto" points made by others. "Green energy!" without looking into what green energy is, the cost-benefit analysis between the different forms of it, and other side issues to consider. But also "Oil! Oil!" Without looking into the issues with oil, and closing off their ears to the real environmental considerations of relying on it.
But that's also partly because science is hard, yo. We have lives, we have other things to do, we can't just keep reading about all these little things in the world... but if it matters to you, if you view it as important, SHOULDN'T you spend some time on the subject? And if you don't, should you really have a strong opinion on it?
This is the problem with political debates, and why so many are apathetic about it. It's just too much effort, and discussing it risks losing friendships, thanks to the first point.
There has to be a better way for us to organize ourselves, than into factions on factual issues.
