For Väres, of these signals was an apparent inability prevalent in both U.S. and Estonian society, to switch out the prism which key issues are analyzed through, he went on.

Almost all of us have been prone to that affliction that compels us to view the world solely through our smartphone cameras. I for one certainly have. Be it a favorite artist performing on stage, a beautiful sunset or a child doing something cute, it is almost as if an evil spirit compels my hand to reach for the phone in my pocket.

Rather than calmly enjoying the moment, we strive to capture it in a vast, digital photo album which we never seem to find the time to browse through.

Much of the time, thanks to social media, we end up gazing on our screens at the plain, wall-to-wall backdrop of other people's snaps.

Smartphone cameras also display technical shortcomings – even the best of these fall far short of professional cameras, which can accommodate wide-angle and powerful telephoto lenses, in their zooming-in capabilities.

Our contemporary world view often risks becoming similarly desultory. Whether by being bogged down in the detail or in observing from a faraway, detached perspective, we frequently view what is unfolding around us through a singular lens, failing to shift perspectives quickly and consciously.

That Donald Trump is currently one of the most polarizing figures this side of the Milky Way is a trend especially evident in judgment calls made about him. Those who dislike Trump often reject all and any policies he implemented during his previous term, or those he has pledged to pursue if re-elected.

One of the sharpest points of conflict is the issue of immigration.

Yes, naturally an effort to curb illegal immigration has resulted in highly unethical, or even inhumane, incidents, but these do not inherently mean that the U.S. should allow all and sundry who wish to, to cross the Mexican border.

Let us not forget that in recent years the EU, too, has made considerable efforts to keep apparent waves of refugees at bay beyond its borders.

Mart Helme on Trump's victory: Things will turn complicated for us

Let us take a different objective for a moment and view the issue of European immigration from afar. Do the majority of Europeans and European countries want mass immigration to continue? No. They may wish for skilled labor, the so-called handpicked new residents, but not for millions of refugees, any more.

Now let us pull the focus in a bit closer and ask: Is the situation for war refugees at the EU's borders satisfactory by European standards?

Hardly, to put it mildly. And things are getting worse. The latest Middle Eastern crisis has, among other things, led many people who fled Syria for Lebanon, to return to Syria, after the onset of Israeli airstrikes, by way of illustrating their plight.

However, the current European consensus is that we cannot accommodate mass refugee flows. We can contribute to cooling conflict zones, boosting the economies of the southerly countries, and mitigating the effects of the environmental crisis, which is also a driver of migration, but we are no longer inviting them in indiscriminately as we feel it would threaten our own well-being.

With that, if we consider European migration policy to be legitimate and reasonable, we therefore cannot outright condemn it in Trump's case. While Trump's opponents operate from a very simplistic standpoint whereby everything he does must be bad, they still fail to grasp why he enjoys such strong support at home.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump's supporters often focus too narrowly on those policies that directly affect them, such as promises to support the U.S. auto assembly industry, and fail to see how his actions and rhetoric, which can undermine the rule of law and the international order, have left his golden tower's foundation thoroughly rotten.

It is particularly disheartening to see how even some Estonians get entrenched in delusions of this kind, ardently supporting Trump's culture war battles and even applauding his alleged plan to cede parts of Ukraine to Russia in order to achieve peace – despite this clearly not only harming Ukraine, but Estonia too.

If we do not learn to better code-switch between the different prisms, our domestic debates will often fall victim to the same traps.

We either focus excessively on certain details, often related to issues closest to us, and thus fail to perceive how the broader environment indirectly and over the long term affects us, or, conversely, we generalize everything and fail to notice how, that, along with the bathwater, we also throw out the baby*

* The original Estonian, "''Koos sortsidega, saab pihta ka siil," is a reference to folk epic the Kaleivpoeg and more literally translated would be: "Throwing away the hedgehog with the warlock."

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