exchanges of ideas, done well and poorly

Here's a study in contrasts for you. In the first video below, we have Jon Miller talking to a retired policeman who is agitating for the legalization of heroin and, seemingly, all other drugs. Miller takes the side of the skeptical Devil's advocate, and what ensues is a clear and respectful exchange (although Miller's evocation of God, at one point, made me wince):


Next up, we have Will Witt from Prager U. attempting to explode liberal conceptions of the supposedly hateful, bigoted right. I see this video as a failure to send the message it's intending to send. Witt offers Donald Trump's recent push for the decriminalization of homosexuality in many gay-unfriendly countries—a single data point—as evidence that the right as a whole isn't bigoted or prejudiced. There's a whole stack of logical fallacies inherent in the way this video has been put together, but watch it for yourself and feel the cringe:


Jon Miller, for all his theatrics, turns out to be a pretty good interviewer. And I normally enjoy the trolling nature of Will Witt's man-on-the-street gotcha interviews, but I found this particular one to be pretty egregious in its tactics—which were, as I said above, logically fallacious in terms of the case he was trying to make.