Thank you. You are absolutely right: your post is a very apt description of the “debate”! I think I will have to bow out because it is exhausting and trying to reason with people who are so entrenched in their chosen arbitrary ideology that they are impervious to any reason or discussion and clearly had no intention of any discussion in the first place is pointless, as you say.
Attempts at rational discussion are met with endless and bizarre personal attacks, deliberate misrepresentation of comments, ignoring inconvenient facts that don’t fit their chosen narrative, whataboutery, pointless denial of reality, and refusal to respond to anything with any rational argument to support their position even when asked in good faith to set out a coherent argument for their position: It’s clear there was never an intention to have anything resembling a rational or factual debate.
It’s a huge indictment of how low society has sunk already and doesn’t bode well as, as such, is extremely depressing but as you have said there’s only so much you can do and then it just becomes a case of bashing your head on a wall, which is not how I wish to spend my evening!