Indeed. But demanding empathy as the only valid a counter-strategy is, which is what the GP was doing. Appeasement doesn't work if your opponent isn't following the rulebook.

From my point of view, you don't reason with immature children, you give them a time-out. You don't hand them weapons of mass destruction.

The sort of understanding the GP is promoting doesn't have to be used empathetically.

It can also be used on bad faith actors by giving you better avenues of winning over the audience - which is the only real point of continuing a conversation with one.

Correct: but giving them a thousand timeouts doesn't help, if you still need to give the thousand-and-first. It mitigates the immediate problem, but it also ties up your resources. Eliminating the problem at its root, if that's possible, is a more effective strategy: if we can take away the ability for the real bad actors to get loyal followers, by learning how to change those followers' minds, they won't have anywhere near as much power.

We live in a democracy. In a democracy, you don't get to deny people the vote simply because you view them as children. And, sadly, these "children" have around half the votes.

If you are personally not capable of attempting empathy, that's fair. As I said, it is frustrating and hard. But a political culture where nobody attempts empathy is what has allowed grifters playing up the resulting culture war to gain political power, and put themselves in a position to aim for a dictatorship. If everyone keeps doing the same old, same old, the totalitarian outcome is guaranteed.

I'll make this concrete. Right now, many in Trump's base are dissatisfied with the handling of the Epstein affair. As much as you may disagree with a random Republican, the odds are that your differences are not as important right now than winding up united against the idea of an authoritarian pedophile running the country. But if the only emotion that they get is anger about all of the areas where there is disagreement, they won't have anywhere to go but back to Trump.

Is that outcome really what you think is best?