I admire your resolve but I think you (pl.) could do with a new playbook.
On this, I agree.
Look at the basic framework - there is "us", and we're right, and there's them, not so much. Why is that? Why are they not as intuitive, fact-oriented, educated, etc. as we are? Except for the ones we know are smart and educated and like as people, but you know - they're the exceptions. They're playing the game, or - like a drunk uncle - they're good folk, but there's just that one thing about them that's problematic.
You can't get mad at someone like Trump for calling all Muslims terrorists or all Mexicans rapists without questioning that frame. Except people do. So what does that say about them?
From the other side of the equation, there is a similar thing happening - the other guys seem to be short-sighted, too caught up in their emotional rhetoric. How can they possibly ignore the real danger to the masses of their policies and positions? Ignoring A, embracing B, actively encouraging C which can't but lead to catastrophe.
A = the threat of immigrants, or the threat of climate change.
B = green tech or traditional fossil fuel
C = abuse of workers or crippling social programs
Lots of other options available, but you get the picture.
But we have facts, you say. They don't have facts, they have rhetoric.
Let's be honest - do we have the facts? All the facts? Who does an in-depth, academic-like study of anything to get the good and the bad? The convenient or inconvenient facts?
Who tries to prove the other guy's argument, see it through their eyes, before responding?
We don't communicate - we message. Facts are not seen as starting points, but as arrows in our quivers.
Society can't function if it's questioning everything, all the time - no more than it can by moving forward with nothing but untested ideas, nor relying on the status quo in a dynamic world.
But - if we question our assumptions, uproot and look at the evidence we hold to be indisputable, but know that there are risk and harm in the positioning of the other side, then who is right? Where's the answer?
That's where we need to be right now. Uncertainty, but not with fear, but a sense of the possible.
