It is normal… first Social Media desensitizated all of us… by the masses. It is hard to prove now what is true or false… Even “sensible Governments”, left and right are applying techniques that Trump popularized… Look at the EU today! Add that to a fragile real economy (not what you see in the stock market) so everyone is afraid of a bold move and being written into a black list. I used to have a professor in that showed us documents (from FOIA) how, in the 80s, the FBI contacted his employers after his interviews no to hire him because his Communist ideas… Today you would not even get FOIA on that. Imagine now with the technology how a government hostile to you can ruin your life. The best way to survive, put your head down and go as unnoticed as possible.
That is very hard to asses. I prefer to look it like this, what chances is that you will find a partner (like for marry to) out of 100 or so. I do believe, if given equal chance of interaction, you could find a marrying-material partner every 7 or 8 people. Now, in a world of plenty of choices, biases etc, we shuffle through hundreds of people before settling with one… and, even then, still unhappy with the choice for the people we haven gone through yet in our search. Now, that is for me… Chances is you would choose a different person out of these very same 7 to 8 people. Both chosen persons have the same chance of being equally good persons, as the non chosen ones.