What is happening is different and what is being reported is different.

That’s just the thing. It’s different for you.

I want to go back to having political discussions where I may vehemently disagree with someone else but where the stakes weren’t literally life and death

The stakes are always literally life and death. You’ll be hard pressed to come up with any kind of important legislation that ultimately doesn’t save or kill people. Gay marriage is a life or death issue. Vehicle efficiency is a life of death issue. The environment is definitely a life or death issue.

I fucking can’t stand how divided we’ve gotten

The divides have always been there. Some people just weren’t being heard. The problem isn’t that we are divided, the problem is that it’s no longer below the surface. It’s not just the fascists and other Republicans (if there any other Republicans anymore), it’s the comfortable suburbs that were satisfied to ignore rural and urban issues and act like we had all the time in the world to solve them.