In my experience this tends to be based on the loudest members of each party clinging to core concepts of which they have a great degree of certainty while branding opposing partisans with straw men. The problem materializes when a loud member of the opposing view actually defends the straw man.<p>Just as an example, look at a recent controversy with this whole HB2 thing in North Carolina.<p>On the one hand you have proponents of the bill raising concerns about it enabling men an opening to enter women&#x27;s restrooms by simply claiming they are something they are not. Those same proponents are willing to ignore all of the other problems with the bill while holding to this one very defensible view. Very few actually have any concerns about true transgendered people and statistics would support that view as well.<p>On the other side you have people outraged about discrimination of transgendered individuals who are willing to totally ignore the problem of allowing men to enter those same rooms. These people are also rightly citing the other discriminatory areas in the bill.<p>The news focuses only on the bathroom piece.<p>The result is one group rightly shouting about concerns over allowing men an excuse to enter ladies rooms and another group rightly shouting about concerns over discrimination of the transgendered.<p>If either side was actually listening to the other we&#x27;d be able to have a pretty simply solution to everyone&#x27;s  concerns.<p>Make men&#x27;s rooms into generally accessible restrooms and leave ladies rooms as ladies rooms. That would pretty much solve the problem although it hits on the other political hot button...<p>Pretending men and women are not different. So the cycle begins again.<p>And while that&#x27;s going on things like the TPP happen.<p>EDIT: The amount of up and down voting I&#x27;m seeing on this post seems to validate the paper&#x27;s findings.