Oh my god, I'm having a civil debate on the internet!! No, thankyou. It's really nice (and faith in humanity affirming) to be able to disagree and still have a real conversation.

As I said, my issue is just that there are plenty of real world examples we could be looking at and learning from.

At best, characters are the writer's attempt to say something which may or may not be true. Writers are only human and have biases and fears and prejudices which turn up in their work. That means that the characters they create are caricatures, not reference material.

Characters don't act like humans. If we make the mistake of thinking those we disagree with are like those caricatures, we never have any hope of understanding them and moving towards solutions.

For example, either of us could have assumed the other was just an idiot who would argue in bad faith. That's almost certaiinly how an internet disagreement would be portrayed in fiction. But in reality we're just two people who see something differenly and we can both respect that.

It's not fiction's job to get nuance like that right. It's ours.