You don't make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.
I do believe states' rights was a sound doctrine that got hijacked by some unsavory customers for a while - like 150 years or so. I'm professionally obliged to believe that knowledge is better than ignorance but some kinds of forgetting are OK with me.
We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.
As far as writing I like watching bad movies. Nothing stops me in my tracks more than watching a great film like 'The Godfather' or 'Dog Day Afternoon' or 'The Graduate.' You watch one of those and you never want to write again. Whereas with bad movies it makes you think If that counts I certainly could write.