Throughout my life as each decade has gone by, we've become more tolerant, and kind to one another. In the last decade things have gone in the other direction for the first time in my life.
In addition, we used to be able to disagree with one another on the substance of ideas. Now there's very few things we can have civil disagreements on.
We're much less capable of handling our emotions now and that's been exploited by politicians and adversaries. That emotion has shut down our rational thinking, and fear and anger are driving too much of our thoughts and beliefs. Social media is a big part of it, but it's not going anywhere.
The only way we're gonna keep this from getting worse and worse and eventually erupting into something very bad, is if the adults in the room put their foot down, and start calling out shitty behavior, instead of normalizing it.
If we just accept it as normal, it only empowers shitty people, to keep being shitty to one another. I shudder to think what it will be like decades from now if we don't get our act together.