You wrote a very interesting and cogently argued article. I think you are very perceptive. One issue we have is that people are not able to be objective, take a step back and ask why the other person thinks/believes the way he does. This is in addition to the idea of objective right and wrong, and is a skill that humanists used to have in the time of our founding fathers. In those days, an educated man read the Greek and Roman philosophers and was trained in rhetoric. This type of training dates back to the Renaissance. We have lost it and consequently we have the dysfunctional politics of our era.