Good question

It sometimes seems as if much or most of our public dialogue consists of a back and forth between two extreme factions, neither interested in truth, and both wanting only to fight the easy fight of strawmen. Your opponent's position is far easier to defeat when you recharacterize it in the terms you wish to tear down, rather than actually having to address the real issues about which they are concerned. Is this sheer ignorance, laziness, or something else? I don't know. I like the observation below from Rick Hills in his blog post, On being assigned a role in other people's ideological dramas.

Why is it that people obsessed with some ideological dispute feel the need to assign everyone else a role in their personal drama -- either as heroic and scrappy rebels or as minions of the Evil Empire? Why does it not occur to such fanatics that others might simply be indifferent to the fanatic's particular obsession -- that others are bored bystanders who are not going to buy a ticket to the fanatic's peculiar summer epic?

Non-interference in matters not our own and respect for truth do seem to be mere shadowy spectators these days rather than stalwart participants in the public debates.