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Much of our personality is driven by our genes. However, parents, siblings, relatives, teachers, faith leaders, friends and media in the community can reinforce innate positive personality traits, or on the other hand, act as "conscience" to overcome ones "dark side".
Exposure to the "other" in urban and university settings can have a positive effect on critical thinking. Alternatively, if your family and community comprises a bunch of "think a likes" then it is much harder to break away from the tribal norms. Many of those tribal views now are fed by far right websites and certain media figures where facts are absent and fear, rage and hate takes on a life of its own, spreading like a virus.
Life on the dark side consists of lots of bubbles, many of which are interconnected into a right wing blogosphere . We on the left get a taste of it when trolls enter into our domain and spew out their ignorance and biases. They scare the shit out me because their bigot-in-chief has now been elected president. They vote in large numbers. We liberals, on the other hand, apply purity tests to our candidates and then stay home on election day...so offended by some innocuous statement, half-truth or lies we choose to believe from the distant past.
Now many of these bigoted "deplorable" people are otherwise good Americans. We know them at work, school, in sports...or maybe even in ones church. But left alone or with their clans they live in their bubbles where emotions fester the anger, and critical thought is totally absent.
Diversity of worldviews would normally be perceived as a plus for our country as it stimulates thought and can be profitable to capitalism, corporations and government. Now you are only getting pockets of that more open minded thinking in such west coast states as California, Oregon and Washington and a few more on the east coast. Having said that liberals too must guard against polarization and bubble thinking. We are our own worst enemies by also succumbing to our emotions as in the last election...and most midterm elections including state and local.