It's always emotionally draining talking to a highly religious person, but in much the same I often find it draining to discuss the topics with people that worship authors like Richard Dawkins. Often it seems like people I met either swing in the hyper religious direction, or the highly atheistic direction. It doesn't seem like there is a whole lot of middle ground anymore. For example, I've known people whom talk about the inadequacies of their own religious document, and yet become defensive whenever other people state their own opinions within the same book.
Particularly now, we need to unite more than ever against the encroachment of authoritarians upon our civil liberties, and yet so often it seems people are more content to trash Libertarians, even though Libertarianism in itself is not a single ideology, and it could be argued is antithetical to ideology. We live in a world where religion and politics, despite constitutional amendments to the contrary, serve to ensure that said things in writing cannot be enforced. For many, politics has become people's religions. In our Political Union (that was once purely an economic union, although that's often written out of the history books) we have laws enacted that come attached, thousands of pages of things that permanently tie top tier corporations financing of the Federal Government, with dollars coming from the Federal Reserve, essentially a state run organized crime ring, that finances intelligence services like the FBI, CIA, and NSA. Then there is the National Reconnaissance Office you can add to this list as well, and others who own the night.
Yet such institutions are so far in the background, that when things like controversial religious institutes, this is what tends to attract people's attention, rather than the systemic problems that allow religious institutions and their private schools to flourish. An institution that mandates mandatory education. This system whose education system, despite calling itself public education, functions in many ways similarly to a private school. The only reason most people tolerate it, is because the schools don't force religion down people's throats, but even that depends on the part of the political Union that you live in.
It's currently impossible to privately organize any kind of meaningful rebellion, when security cameras watch everyone's moves in public spaces. This limits opportunities for meeting new people, unless you live in Suburban areas. This ends up necessitating the need for trade craft, a practice that is illegal in most nations, when conducted against a foreign power, although in places like China this gets murky when you consider the fact that businesses are essentially state run. Although it could be argued that the case isn't that much different over here.
Even to exchange a private conversation, unless it's of a religion nation, is scarcely reachable by the hands of masked public space intruders, or those treated as such, but a society that considers any kind of personal information protection, actions that only someone of a foreign power would do. We're approaching a climate, were citizens are treated as enemy combatants.
But they only care about debating religion and guns.
Meanwhile, the real outsiders shoot themselves, and they alone with scarcely anyone remembering them.