Mental bric-a-brac
1. Though I don't believe in the supernatural, ghost stories scare the hell out of me at night. There's an attraction/terror. I tease myself with them, then get scared and angry that I scared myself.
What's underneath this? What am I truly afraid of? I don't know.
2. "Both sides are just as bad" has been disturbing me a lot, lately. I'm watching non-woke liberals succumb to this. It's causing them to minimize what the left is doing. I suspect this is because they do not wish to let go of their former comfortable view of the world: "Liberals mean well and do well, and conservatives mean bad and do bad."
I feel like I'm in a war in which my platoon, suddenly, forgets we're in a war and suggests having sympathy for the side shelling our position.
Edited to add:
3. I’m discovering I’m much more alone politically and morally than I thought. It feels heavy. Yes, it’s good meeting new people who agree with my values.
No, it’s not enough. It weighs very heavily on me emotionally.
I’m glad for you if this knowledge doesn’t weigh on you so heavily, but it does me. This is not a request for suggestions about meditation, thank you.
I have similar fears of ghosts. I sometimes can only sleep with my head under a blanket and of course I cannot have my foot stick out. I think it is the fear of loss of control. The fear of a power that cannot be contained. When I -- as a foreign student -- lived in South Africa in Cape Town one stormy night, I was sad, depressed, cried a lot because I was lonely, and drank too much, There was a storm outside and rain was just hitting my windows hard, the old frames of this old converted motel (now an official apartment complex) shook... and I heard banging and knocks and could not tell which door was affected. Eventually, my gay neighbor Brian and then best friend called my phone (we had phones still connected like during the motel times) and asked if I was ok. He heard the same banging on doors (his door) and when he got up, he claimed there was a dead woman hanging in his hallway (a ghost) and he thought at first it must be because of me. I told him I was ok. But this story still scares me.
On the other topic. Yes, this is what I find often a dishonest conversation. It is a form of whataboutism. It is minimizing and dismissing of concerns. It is hedging, because you do not want to lose followers and appear reasonable. In times like this, it never leads to a conversation in good faith.
Regarding your first point, I'm in roughly the same boat. Rationally, I don't believe in the supernatural, but I have the same neural circuitry as other humans, and my supernatural fear circuit can get tripped under the right circumstances, and then my notions of rationality provide no effective defense.
I've made four trips to the Peruvian Amazon to participate in Ayahuasca ceremonies, and in that context, my materialist reality tunnel melts into irrelevance. When you're in the jungle, an hour's walk from the river and a couple of hours' boat ride from the city, with the shaman singing his icaros and the sounds of the rain forest enveloping you as the ayahuasca teases your mind and torments your guts, the idea that spirits don't exist is simply laughable and clearly contrary to experience.
Anyway, I don't want my supernatural terror response triggered, so I don't feed it. I avoid most supernatural horror media. Movies and TV shows are bad enough, but video games are the worst. The only supernatural stuff I'll take in is Cosmic Horror like Annihilation or The Void.