Reasonable People vs Idiots
This kind of idiot believes in some ideology, some statement, lets call it S. Now to support the statement S the idiot comes up with some arguments, X, Y, Z.
There is nothing wrong so far. What is wrong with the idiot is that idiot first picks the statement S, in idiots mind claims S is true, and then during debate comes up with these X, Y, Z reasons.
What a reasonable person does is first looks at S as a possible position, finds out X, Y, Z arguments to support it, finds P, Q, R arguments to oppose it, and once after analysis finds that X-Y-Z trumps P-Q-R then assumes S may be true[1].
So when debating with an idiot who went through former way, you will see that idiot will raise X, Y and Z during debates, but will never mention P, Q, R. This is the first sign you are talking to an idiot.
You will discuss the details of X, Y, Z with the idiot, one by one shoot them down and idiot will still convinced of S, as in his mind S comes first, and X, Y, Z are just incidental, will not see the going down of X, Y, Z as weakening S, but will attribute you shooting down X, Y, Z as an evidence of you not believing in S or some other personal reason on your part.
This is not all. You shoot down X, Y to him, lets say Z is not yet sufficiently disproven, when discussing with you the idiot will focus on just Z, but as soon as you are out of discussion, the moment idiot starts talking to someone else, idiot will go back to X, Y, Z. This is the second and surer way to spot an idiot.
The fact that you shot down X and Y is immaterial to the idiot. In fact X, Y, Z are all immaterial to the idiot. The idiot only cares about S, and idiot just invokes X, Y, Z so that the idiot can pretend its not all based on idiots assumptions and is not worth debating in a logical fashion. Religious idiots will see you shooting down X, Y, Z as a test of his faith, and will somehow take the fact that idiot is left with just Z as a test of idiots faith to S, and feel even happier about their "loyalty" to S.
Idiots present another challenge, lets call it moving goal post problem. The idiot when faced with X-Y-Z being shot down will come up with any plausible or even implausible a-b-c to support S. Idiot will consider it your duty to shoot down X-Y-Z and then a-b-c and as long as even a single argument exist that can be said to be in favor of S, idiot will assume S is true. You have to shoot every single last one of them, and idiot will just keep coming up with new arguments. Idiot is not bothered about how strong P, Q, R are or about the fact that their strongest arguments X-Y-Z were just shot down. As long as idiot can come up with even one new argument in support of S no matter how weak, idiots assume they have won the argument, and the idiot will only accept loss if you can prove that weak argument to be false. And the idiot will come up with another.
Idiots are driven by S, reasonable people care about X-Y-Z and P-Q-R.
The fact that you are talking agsint S means to idiot that you somehow dislike S. In an idiots mind that is the only reason to oppose something, and the only reason to support something is if you like it. This is personal judgement, and to idiot personal judgement is supreme.
A reasonable person knows personal judgemnents are not the final post. One does not check validity of proof based on personal judgement, instead one checks their personal judgements based on arguments and facts.
A reasonable person is forced to abandon their belief when presented with a counter argument they can not reconcile. An idiot feel it is up to their personal judgment to decide to abandon their belief or not. Reasonable person is driven by reason, and idiots are driven by personal judgments. So much so that when you are shooting down X-Y-Z, idiot will not use reason to decide if X-Y-Z were shot down, but will rely on personal judgment alone. A reasonable person will never talk about personal judgments, personal judgments are not brought in debates, they are kept for voting. An idiot will only talk about personal judgments. A reasonable person is slave of reason, an idiot slave of their personal judgments.
An idiot thinks taking back a statement, changing their mind is like "end of their religion[2]", they avoid changing their mind like death. A reasonable person considers every dialogue to be an opportunity to change their mind.
The idiot wants their ignorance, presumptions and opinions to be treated at the same level as conclusions of reasonable people. To the idiot that is their basic right.
You can not defeat these idiots. You can only spot them and avoid them. And you can hope to make the issue a matter of vote instead of dialogue and hope the rest of the voting population is not all idiots[3].
[1]. The idiots too make this claim, but they only say the used to believe in not S because of P, Q, R, instead of S because they saw P, Q, R beat X, Y, Z. If there are idiots who believe in S then there are also idiots who believe in opposite of S. If you are idiot or not does not depend on which side of S you fall, but what method you arrived to get there.
[2]. In many cases it is end of religion. Religion is a set of S that an idiot decides to believe as true. Religion requires you to not question or reason. Religion requires reason to be suspended. Only idiots fall for religions.
[3]. Since most societies are composed of majority idiots, it is not a smart way to force early voting.