Look, I get it. Liberals want to paint conservatives as racist misogynistic backwards-thinking assholes. And conservatives want to paint liberals as smug out-of-touch elitist whiners.

And hey, what better way to illustrate your distaste for the other side than with an awesome meme “destroying” them?

The problem is, there are assholes on both sides (click here for a fuller explanation). And social media and meme culture lend themselves to focusing only on said assholes. When you share a meme, there’s no room for nuance, there’s no room for discussion, there’s no room for engagement.

So we can either fixate on this tiny percentage of assholes and paint everyone on the other side as such. Or we can accept that most people on both sides of the political spectrum are decent human beings, and actually try to reach across the aisle and engage with them.

Should there even be any doubt which is the more productive option?