"We hold these truths to be self-evident..." This phrase was written in a world where the principles it invokes were anything but self-evident - a world where oppressors could hide their agendas behind centuries of Byzantine political thought and mountains of authoritative theosophical treatises. And yet Thomas Jefferson did not waste a single word of the Declaration of Independence rebutting the medieval gibberish of European monarchy, despite its dominion over nearly the entire world. He simply cast aside the underlying assumptions of monarchy without even mentioning them, stated the rights of the people as fundamental to the legitimacy of government, and declared any authority which failed to respect those rights as void by its actions. So why do I get the impression that if the Declaration were written by a liberal today, 2/3 of it would consist of "debunking" British press editorials, and the remainder would be divided between polls, sentimental anecdotes, and obscure philosophical arguments?
Even among people who spend a lot of time discussing politics and framing the debate, a disturbingly large proportion of "liberals" don't actually live there - they just kind of "camp out" on the left because they find the right strident and inhospitable, but don't seem to quite believe the conclusions of liberal thought. A lot of "us" just can't seem to make the distinction in our opponents made famous by a Monty Python skit - the difference between argument and mere contradiction. When a seven-year-old answers everything you say by saying the opposite, they're not arguing with your ideas or plumbing the depths of philosophy, they're just making a power play and trying to wear you down. Pretty much the same thing is true with most Republican commentary / propaganda.
When there is a person in your physical presence whose every other word is a lie, you don't keep arguing with them when you realize what they are - you pity and/or loathe them, and then move on to more constructive business. You do not follow them around recording their lies so you can get the pleasure of confronting them later, only to hear their new set of lies justifying the old ones. You do not, in other words, create an entire social relationship out of the fact that someone is dysfunctional and/or malevolent towards you. You just cut them off: Stop listening to them, stop interacting with them, stop behaving as if there is meaning in their words.
But that is not what happens here. We get the latest "debunk" diary refuting the claims of people who already have no credibility; an outraged diary about some irrelevant media whore saying something or other; the constant need to give right-wing perverts more of a spotlight just to serve our sense of schadenfreude, not recognizing that it harms the integrity of the public debate.
It is our responsibility to argue with our opponents when they offer real arguments, or when the issue is unclear enough that discussion is warranted. But when it's clear that they are simply instruments of noise and disinformation with nothing to say; dishonest, Orwellian rats who simply want to make communication harder, cast doubt on facts, and portray bald-faced lies as Truth; those people you ostracize. Completely. Them, their organizations, the parties they represent, etc. You walk right through it, rejecting its basic legitimacy. They have to earn your attention, because your attention is valuable. And they have to earn it by showing you the respect of not being psychotic lying robots.
These rules are essential. One diary asked why we're still debating Planned Parentedhood forty years later? The question for me is not why the anti-abortion nuts are still shrieking against it and making things up to get it banned - that's just sick religious nuts do. The question for me is why, when these nuts keep talking, do you keep answering them? Learn to accept the fact that you are right, and that being right gives you authority to judge your opponents unworthy of being debated. If all their lies and screeching go on deaf, vaguely amused ears, and this drives them batshit with rage, then good - their frustration would be natural commeuppance for trying to bully and lie to people. And if they take it to the final step and go violent, they're conceding in the only way they know how: Trying to shoot out the eyeballs of anyone who sees how stupid and evil they are.
Otherwise you're just going to spend the rest of your life knocking down the same zombie lies every day, every week, every month, every election cycle, etc. You're going to waste yourself arguing with fanatics and sociopathic liars who don't even consider you human. Find people whom you can respect with somewhat different views than yours, and find consensus. But for the TP'ers and Goopers, nothing. They are an all-or-knothing, epistemically-closed set of mass-psychoses impenetrable to reason, science, or humanity, and their only two paths are irrelevance or self-destruction. Neither of which add up to being worthy of my attention.