That's how Western Political debates start, but then it eventually devolves into throwing shoes and chairs at each other anyways.

That's why western political debates are stupid. They have to use words as foreplay for the inevitable violence.

I'm not sure about the chair thing, but from what I know, just showing the sole in that culture is highly offensive, so throwing your shoe not only communicates your extreme contempt for that person (tl;dr treat it as flinging shit at someone) while also doubling as a ranged/melee attack.

(A quick read shows there's some fatwa around banning chairs altogether because there were no chairs in Mohammad's time, and an army of shoes wants to argue otherwise)