Yup, that pretty much sums it up today trying to talk to the leftists.

Honestly, I'm really not well equipped for a formal debate...and I suspect that's true of the vast majority of us. High level debate requires all involved to be actually trained. Most of us can be easily triggered into the sort of emotional condition that disrupts our reasonable levels of thinking. We miss the opportunities that our interlocutors present us to negate their rhetoric because we fall victim to the very goal of rhetoric: emotionalizing the conversation for the purpose of directing it toward a preferred conclusion rather than an honest examination of the ideas under question.

Effective debate requires training in logic, argumentation, recognition of fallacy; formal debate requires practice and discipline.

Conversation requires little more than good faith and mutual trust. Also very difficult, but not at all impossible among us lower life-forms. Most of us are familiar with the feeling of humiliation; a little humility ought to come easily.

In terms of having meaningful dialog, I think it's fairly accurate.