There isn't really much difference between here and Reddit. Especially on political topics, you get the same tired and defeated arguments and opinions over and over again.
reddit is simply on another level though. See Paul Graham's concept of the "aggressively conventional-minded": https://paulgraham.com/conformism.html
To an extent yes, but individually I have much more nuanced interactions here with users. Whereas on Reddit I get dog piled by hundreds of black and white thinkers all circle jerking each other, making identical replies to my comments.
Here I often will get a deep thread with one user that's quite interesting, even if we disagree in many ways. It's also usually polite for the most part.