I participated in some political online discussions (something I rarely do) in good faith and the responses I got were often uninformed (no idea what subsidiarity means, what the EU institutions are, the objectives of the Maastricht treaty, ..) and more often hostile ("fuck off you want us to give Germany another pounding?", "why aren't you grateful", "we have the most powerful army and sit on the UN Security Council", ...)
After reading that for hours I came to the conclusion that these people are 1) stupid, and 2) arguing in bad faith. It was totally unlike a well paced engineering discussion.
What's your plan for engaging in this kind of discourse?
(I can link you to plenty of comments on HN right now that argue with words like "these people", "sickening", or say "The EU has no relevance to peace or war.")