SE Hoya Containment Thread (aka Politics)

Welcome to the Official SE Politics Thread. The aim here is for high quality political discussion and debate. The concomitant aim here is for that high quality discussion and debate to NOT devolve into MAD posting, BAD posting, trolling, name-calling our community fracture.

We embark on this project hoping to encourage fair and thorough exchanges of views, and also fair and thorough advocacy for positions. We should learn a lot.

Rules

1. Posters are required to have 50 posts in SE over the last 365 days. This thread is not a proxy for the Politics forum, or an arena for goal-based issue advocacy from people we don't even know.

2. Pure devil's advocacy will not be tolerated unless it is identified by that poster as the aim of the particular post. There will be no run of the mill nitpickery for the sake of nitpickery.

3. This will be enforced loosely, but you are obligated to outline your basic position on whatever issue you're debating. We will not have loaded, gotcha-style internet-standard race to the bottom terrible posting in this thread. That does not mean you have to state every closely-held belief in every debate. You just can't hide the ball. "I'm not sure what my position is" is a completely valid position to hold.

4. Insults are out. You will not resort to that in this thread, because that will ruin this thread.

5. If you demonstrate an ongoing commitment to lowering the quality of discourse through incessant trolling or simply being really terrible, you'll be removed from this thread.

6. These are subject to significant revision as this thread develops.

There is a tradition in SE of better, fuller, funnier discussion of a really wide range of topics. Let's continue that here.