I don't disagree.

However, I feel like I have done my part (even if I don't fully think I have done my part) in maintaining a high level of discourse so long as my tone is at least somewhat less snarky/more civil than what I am responding to. It's perhaps a way of rationalizing doing more or less what I want to do more or less whenever I want to do it; pretending to have the tone high ground as if it were something binary or perhaps tertiary, with one participant in the conversation or the other or neither having it, with how much better one is than the other counting for little.

I blame scope insensitivity!

Yet I would like to think that two of me conversing wold always be civil, what with each trying to be at least a bit more civil than the other. The system I feel is right isn't so bad.

The obvious weakness would be misjudging intended and perceived levels of snark...

So. Upvoted.