I think a lot of the current turn toward insularity and xenophobia is in fact a response to a looming sense of resource scarcity and competition. Naomi Klein has characterized the future as a battle between "disaster capitalism" and communalism. It appears for now that the battle lines are being drawn and our better angels are losing.
I find myself coming back to a sort of old-fashioned word for what I think we need: "conviviality". We need a rise in neighbors working with neighbors within a relocalized and vastly constrained economic model. To do that, we need to learn to get along and appreciate one another. While I try and surround myself with people that appreciate that view, I find the world around me increasingly hostile to it.
Is it though? Or are we just being told that it is, lead there, when in reality, the majority of us would still opt for the alternative deep down?
Remember that news-media distracts, divides, and confuses. Would this even be an issue had they not focused on Trump and the other endless streams of social fear? Probably not. They foster this mindset like so many others they foster. And it is super effective. So the reverse may also be super effective, just in the opposite, positive way.
We need to reverse the effect of that machine from almost totally negative and divisive to almost totally positive and uniting. We should realize that while we can't conceive of just how monumental the shift would be, or the results of it, certainly it feels very promising deep down.
I guess I see it like this: The vast majority of people would actually be on the same page if we cut through the rhetoric: Live, let live, do good for your neighbours, don't cause harm.
Almost all of our fears stem from some notion that some intangible threat from a generalized group will take those things away from us. These fears are so crippling and go so far in our minds that we FORGET these original principles, we lose awareness of them, and actually contradict them with our actions. Be that hateful speech, thought or physical attack. All stem from confused fear.
I guess I believe that the majority of people can and would change, with proper awareness. If they aren't there yet, the information has not been presented in the right way yet. In fact despite the wide variety of fears and irrational hatred, much of them could be wiped away in most people, if they were all to understand the same simple truths. That is, while we may think "There are many forms of fear and hate, we would have to tackle each in a different manner to solve each" but perhaps there is a single solution to most, so most irrational hate must crumble to this truth should one really grasp the truth.
The truth in fact wins EVERY battle of rationality, if it is allowed to enter the arena, because it is the truth. Not many are really letting it into their consciousness yet, it's there in fragments but it's not understood.
As someone else said, these shifts are non-linear. It just takes the right push in the right direction is really what this comes down to. Keep pushing everything that makes sense and is right, and it may happen.
I have to say, after reading some responses here and elsewhere, I am very optimistic, where I had given up all hope days before. I actually see that this shift we are describing is slowly happening - we are a part of it right here. It is happening, and we ARE in for unbelievable things together. There is much to see. Real impactful change and a future full of love and compassion beyond that could happen, together. We are so close to trying. That's why "they" are discrediting the news and information now, in advance - They know that this is humanity's chance. They have chosen inaction, destruction, unless they have proven to be truthful and productive in what THEY choose to talk about as politicians. It is high time we discard their opinions unless they are wiling to be honest.
There is, and has been for many decades, an active campaign within those entities that comprise government and those who mingle with it intimately, to stifle our awareness by way of newsmedia. They are trying to see this destruction through to certainty. Maybe they even have the fucking answers on how to fix this already, expecting to wipe most of us out and then "Flip the switch" back to a habitable state for themselves. I cannot say of the latter for certain, but it IS certain that they seek to destroy and thus must be destroyed, through non-compliance, through NON-AWARENESS. We must pay these kinds of people no mind, and surely they would have no power like this in the new united world we are visualizing.