> That he wasn’t honestly debating ideas but fishing for soundbites to spread hate and appear intellectual

I'm not convinced political debates are good for anything else. Most people believe in things without really thinking about them. Especially politics.

If you stop and actually reason this stuff out, you're going to reach some deeply disturbing conclusions which border on wrongthink. If you try to spread the nuggets of truth you discovered, you just fail miserably at first. People will not be convinced.

They probably won't really refute you either. Maybe it's because you're right, maybe it's because they didn't even think about what you said and just responded emotionally, there's no way to know for sure because trying to test ideas in debates just doesn't work with the vast majority of human beings.

If you insist on this path, people start thinking you're acting superior to them with your unconventional ideas. At some point you start getting flagged and downvoted on sight. Then you start getting personally called out. Labeled as some "extremist". Maybe one day you become such a nuisance authorities actually knock on your door and arrest you. Maybe your ideas offend someone so much they assassinate you.

So I don't blame this guy at all for debating like a politician. If he debated seriously and won, would his opponents revise their entire belief systems and start following his logical footsteps? Of course not.