For some reason your comment made me crave loaded baked potatoes.

But yeah, it's next to impossible to have an intelligent discussion in the US. Not just because the education system is sorely lacking and anti-intellectualism is deeply embedded in the collective consciousness, but also because so many terms are so loaded that you can't even use them according to their precise technical definitions without everyone assuming you're exaggerating and hyperbolizing because vitriol and mudslinging are so much the norm here.

The inherently polarizing nature of a two-party FPTP electoral system is partly to blame, but so is the concerted effort the right-wing has made in recent years to discredit all political discussion by using all these buzzwords so disingenuously that they lose their meaning.

I think they did it on purpose. The whole projection/every-accusation-is-a-confession thing was a deliberate tactic to preemptively make anyone sound crazy who accuses them of doing the shit they really do, because they've already been so busy accusing everyone else of those things!