A third prong could be playing "philosophical bomb squad", which means permanently defusing landmines by supplying satisfactory nonconfusing explanations of things without causing too many explosions in the process. Needless to say, this is quite hard. I think we do a pretty good job of it here at LW, but for topics and people not yet defused, avoid and abort.

I suspect this is best to do before the "landmine" (which I read as being similar to a factional disagreement, correct me if I'm wrong) gets set off... that is, try to explain away the landmine before it's been triggered or the person you've talked to has expressed any kind of opinion.