>Having been on both sides of some of John's issues, I have to say that he is a master of making you think you understand an issue, when in fact you are carefully sealed off from getting even a whiff of what the other side's points may be, with snark and mockery substituted instead.

It is like the people who, when asked about why some thing should be, they respond "Because it is 2016!" And all their supporters laugh and agree and think the argument has been made. Both sides are really strongly set on talking past each other, and on some issues they are often far closer in opinion than they would ever be willing to admit (especially after all the extreme rhetoric was thrown around).

And my absolute favorite, when you make a careful comparison between two issues to show a comparable line of reasoning, a lot of people will just go "They aren't comparable." No discussion, no attempt to explain why they are different, and if you can manage to get them to keep going, you are going to be swimming in a flood of logical fallacies.