Years back, I learned a valuable lesson - that when it comes to deep emotional trauma, close friends expect you to pick a side - yours or those they oppose. I say "expect", when it's probably actually closer to "require". You can try to be adult, objective and still supportive, but that won't cut it in their eyes, rather they have a deeply-scarred need for support, and you have to be clearly on their team. Not doing that - trying to remain helpfully supportive but not jumping into their well of black and white "me vs them" thinking causes your friends to question your allegiance.This seemed at the time counter-intuitive and confused me. And over time it caused the friendship to suffer a mortal blow. So regardless of whether I understand it or not, I see what happened and I'll admit I've never gone through the depth of their trauma, so give them the benefit of the doubt here. It's hard for any of us to rationalize something that we've never experienced.
I was thinking of this situation today and comparing it to the divide that's growing ever more apparent in the US. People that have decided to make their opinions heard - in the news, social media and elsewhere are heated and extremely passionate. You have be "with them", or you're "against them" it seems. Perhaps more than any other impact, the move away from centrist positions towards idealogical extremes and polarized positions has caused the end of civil dialogue. It's hard to have an open mind when you're being shouted down.
Which brings me back to my friend. He suffered a deep emotional trauma that caused him to (temporarily) react in the way that he did. Perhaps, that's what we're seeing here too. A society that as a whole are all going through a deep trauma, and the nature and depth of this change is causing them to behave differently than in the past. Time to heal is needed it seems, but that requires that first everyone stops actively trying to hurt one another. I'm not sure that seems likely in the short term.
