When discussing things like this I usually try to use facts and reason.
We often hear "facts don't care about your feelings", but I've come to realize that for most people it's exactly the opposite. "feelings don't care about facts".
Many people's thinking is a result of their assumptions and their feelings.
Compassion and empathy are appealing, and usually when people think they are compassionate about something: the other side isn't and they are wrong, evil, or stupid. Facts are almost worthless online because counter-facts or reasons to disregard/disprove facts that are contrary to our biases are commonplace.

Yes we can't force people to think a certain way.
However, that is where policy and laws come into play.
People on different sides of political affiliations see each other as an existential threat because they are competing in democracy over how those policies are carried out.
Years ago, the dynamic was the same, but in general we didn't see our daily lives changed as a result of these things the way we do now.
In fact, many people who would have considered open-minded; have taken more hard-lined stances because of things they see happening in their lives.
Also, as economic conditions become more challenging for more people those people are going to start becoming more critical about society/politics.

I was always considered an educated person, and I would agree that formal education has very little to do with that.
And education is something that comes up in politics often.
When I was younger I believed that people would act in a negative way due to a lack of education because that was a talking point I consistently heard.
But today, from what I've read and seen: education only changes people who are already past a certain threshold of intelligence. Age can also be a factor.
In school districts with overall low-score results it's typical for politicians to blame this on a lack of funding for education.
What they will not mention is that the people before them ran on the same policy, and that increasing funding to those schools almost never results in improvement in the results. They don't talk about this because it doesn't appeal to anyone to hear that.
Because it's a problem we don't have solutions to, and in govt the solution is almost always to spend more money.

Over the last 10 years we've seen the heat turn up in a lot of ways.
When people disagree on fundamental truths/problems; the cause of the problem usually becomes the people who disagree with them.

And the cold truth of the world is that in nature there is no good/bad or right/wrong.
The mountain lion and a pack of wolves both need the same thing: the meat. The mountain lion kills the deer, and the wolves will chase him off and take his meat because they also need to eat.
Mountain lions have been observed killing a deer for the wolves so that they can keep the next deer.
And that is often why we end up with wars. Because when we can't negotiate or compromise with the opposition; we default to laws of the jungle.
At that point it doesn't matter who is right or wrong until afterwards when we're back to acting like humans again, and charging people with war crimes etc.

But that's where we end up when our truth and our morality are in opposition.