[BigV]

I also heard an interesting story on my local NPR station. The hook for me was about a person who wrote a book called "Mezzaterra" about the middle ground and how it's shrinking. At the risk of looking like a shill for the book, here's a brief description from her website:

Egyptian-born author Ahdaf Soueif, who has made London her home, worries that the rise of Islamophobia is eroding what she calls the "mezzaterra:"

“This was the world that my generation believed we had inherited, an area of overlap where one culture shaded into the other, where echoes and reflections added depth and perspective, where differences were interesting rather than threatening because they were foregrounded against a backdrop of affinities.”

Ahdaf Souief, 'Mezzaterra'

Sounds like a much better headspace than the current one for many people I read about.