In the past few months, about 250 Facebook friends & I have parted ways over their “head-chopping jihadist” posts. Some say that’s censorious & creates an echo-chamber excluding dissident voices.

Hate-filled politics are depressing as hell & bring you down. You can’t have useful discussions with people who don’t share the same sense of reality; with those willfully ignorant & guided in politics by animosities; with those who claim bombing of civilians is antiwar; with those whose politics are expressed in vituperations & abuse.

I practiced persuasion on my conservative family for 40 years before I understood that one of the arts of politics is knowing when to save your breath.