Keep Your Identity Small
Politics,
like religion, is a topic where there's no threshold of expertise
for expressing an opinion. All you need is strong convictions.
what religion and politics have in common is that they
become part of people's identity, and people can never have a
fruitful argument about something that's part of their identity.
By definition they're partisan.
When people say a discussion
has degenerated into a religious war, what they really mean is that
it has started to be driven mostly by people's identities.
If people can't think clearly about anything
that has become part of their identity, then all other things being
equal, the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as
possible.