There might be worse things than being the targeted civilians... like being the soldiers. One thing soldiers report is that after they kill they stop valuing life as much as they did before, a psychological barrier is broken and violence becomes easier. If you are spending a lot of time arguing with your enemies and you are constantly practicing the Dark Arts, I think there is a much greater chance of the Dark Arts weaseling their way into the rest of your thinkings. I used to participate in a few very popular liberal community blogs- part of the reason I don't anymore is that I've changed. But I think another part is that those communities made decisions to sacrifice certain norms of traditional rationality in order to win their rhetorical battles with the right (who we felt had long given up those norms). Once the communities grew up and internalized this rhetorical anarchism the quality of thought degraded rapidly. Indeed, they even started to take policy positions that I believe they wouldn't have if their had been no political advantage in doing so.