I certainly admire and respect your efforts to dissect the current political and international polarization, but at a certain point it's like waving a stick at a fire.
I think that eventually, those left will have to walk back much of human nature and culture, if they want to get to the roots of the problems.
To culture, good and bad are some cosmic conflict between the forces of righteousness and evil, while in nature, it's the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental, the 1/0 of sentience. This is because it is the function of culture to organize society into a larger, unified organism. Witness how those diverging from accepted views are rejected, much like the body's immune system will attack whatever is determined as foreign. Even to the degree of attacking healthy parts of the body, as autoimmune disorders.
Our problem seems to be trying to understand a binary, cyclical, circular, feedback generated reality through the lens of a monolithic paradigm.
Remember democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. The many as one. To the Ancients, monotheism equated with monoculture. One people, one rule, one god. Rome adopted a monotheistic sect as state religion, as the Empire solidified and remnants of the Republic faded. Because The Big Guy Rules.
Logically a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. The light shining through the film, than the images on it.
Ideals are not absolute and an entire culture founded on the premise will be naturally contentious, as the multitudes of ideals feel compelled to fight to the finish.
The reality is more a game of rock, paper, scissors, than winner take all. Life is a dance, not a race.
Yet when the intellectual depth of the debate boils down to Orange Man Bad, or Putin=Hitler, by those who presume themselves intelligent, it does seem pretty hopeless.
Personally my desire to bang my head against walls has never been great. So it seems a matter of waiting until they crumble.
