I think part of the problem is that people see criticism as blame and bad actors. Really criticism is about improving and is an essential aspect of any democracy. It's also fair to say that many that complain blame, but some take advantage and deserve blame.
But a big problem is that any criticism is considered a bad thing. I actually run into this problem a lot when I tell people it's more important to criticize the leaders of your party, because you have a voice in that party. So you can actually iterate and improve your party. You don't have a voice in the opposing party and many times complaining about the other is used smugly to express how your party is superior.
We forgot that critique is about improving, not hating.
That's identity politics that stems out of centralization.
Imagine 2 hot dog stands across the road. Alice makes sour hot dogs, while Bob makes sweet ones. They both focus on how they make the hot dogs. If fewer people want to buy the sour ones, or customers start giving strange looks, Alice will think about tweaking the recipe. Likewise the Bob can now charge more, or open a spin-off at the next intersection. The fun part is that Alice and Bob can even be buddies. They can go play pool together in the evening, because business is separate from your private life.
Now imagine a HotDogCo buying both stands. Both Alice and Bob now follow exactly the same tested and optimized recipe, patented by the corporation. Their hot dogs are indistinguishable. So, they now focus on what they are. If someone gives you a strange look, you interpret it as a personal insult. If Alice sells fewer hot dogs than Bob, she will think it's due to her gender, some other identity attribute. The energy that could be spent on improving the recipe is now spent on blaming Bob across the road for having an unfair advantage, and asking your followers to boycott him.
The corporations are happy. Out of each 0.99$ hot dog, 0.5$ goes to the corporate profit, 0.2$ - to the ingredients, and Alice and Bob get paid minimum wage. They are also interchangeable and are now too busy fighting each other to launch an independent stand and keep that $0.5 to themselves. Mission accomplished, HotDogCo stocks soar, while Alice and Bob are now locked into misery, hatred, and zero savings or retirement perspectives.
To be honest it is a difficult thing to think about it this way. We are psychologically primed to think we've got it figured out (takes more energy to improve than continue what we're doing and animals are about minimal energy usage). But you have to come at it from the mentality of "Everything I do is wrong, but I can make it less wrong." There's also different levels of wrong[0] and that's key. It is about converging on the correct answer (perfection is unobtainable). Being wrong doesn't mean 100% wrong, but when someone tells us we're doing something wrong we treat it like a discrete binary condition instead of a spectral one. So when someone says you're wrong, reframe it in your head as "this is how I can improve." And help others out by instead of calling them wrong, say that they can improve by x,y,z. I've found that this is a constant challenge though and while I've been trying to convince myself to think like this for a decade now, I'm far from being there. But hey, I think I'm stepping in the gradient direction, so that's converging to the solution, right? :)
But a big problem is that any criticism is considered a bad thing. I actually run into this problem a lot when I tell people it's more important to criticize the leaders of your party, because you have a voice in that party. So you can actually iterate and improve your party. You don't have a voice in the opposing party and many times complaining about the other is used smugly to express how your party is superior.
We forgot that critique is about improving, not hating.