A politician (or any human being for that matter) consists of a bunch of dimensions.

American society also has many dimensions , some being representative of the structure and institutions of the society, and then also all the people within the country who are affected by governance, and each individual person is also multidimensional (inside of which is lots of complexity, that drives political decisions within the overall system).

The makeup of a politicians dimensions affects the manner in which they ~govern, with respect to the societal dimensions, and in turn acting upon those dimensions.

Within this system we have "democracy", then within there we have "politics", which consists of this weird multidimensional, ~"interactive dance" that consists of "facts", "logic", rhetoric (perspective/narrative building (and advertising/distribution), framing, hyperbole, motivated reasoning, post-hoc rationalization, propaganda, destroying people with facts, "the news", "debates", memes(!), trolling, shitposting, etc), axioms, principles, "visions", and various other silliness. But all for a good cause, with the best of intentions in mind (to the degree that each individual is capable of that).

When it comes to election time, citizens are given one vote, a binary choice of two candidates. To make this choice, each individual voter crushes down all the complex dimensionality of their personal model of the world (which they mistake for shared reality) and out comes their decision who to vote for.

The purpose of all the absurdity and chicanery in the interactive dance above, is to influence the manner in which each individual crushes their dimensions. More specifically, the purpose of the dance is to influence the makeup/configuration/contents of each person's model - or, alter their perception of reality.

I would say that what the arguments we individuals engage in on social media "is", is simply a part of this dance. In this case, I reckon that you are responding to your model of the world, and interacting with others within the system, hoping to influence their model (an illustration of the viral nature of ideas). More specifically, you are (in all good faith, I presume), ~"deploying a persuasive meme/perspective", something roughly along the lines of:

"Donald Trump's model contains a dimension labelled 'Literally Racist', and it's value is '100%'. Furthermore, *because(!)* anyone who 'is' 'racist' 'should' 'be shunned by society, absolutely, full stop', *then therefore(!)* you must(!) vote for Joe Biden."

If the individuals "political team" (the leader, and all teammates) has done a good enough job in influencing the model of the individual deploying the meme, the person will perceive their action as being righteous, composed of critical thinking, exercising logic, doing the right thing, being an adult in the room, etc. But what it really is, is just this weird dance. And there's no need to feel bad about it, because it seems to be a fairly innate, evolved behavior of human beings, so we all do it (if to varying degrees, and in different styles). I'm doing it right now (in response to you doing it). The whole big thing is just this weird dance, and what ultimately comes out the other end, is a new or reelected President (in part driving the ongoing future evolution of the overall model), and the whole thing starts anew.