Regarding the current community split, I see a lot of parallels between what is happening today in Bitcoin and what happened in the US post revolution. During and immediately after the revolution the founding fathers and other leaders saw themselves as united on a single direction and in near full agreement with each other.
But fairly soon afterwards huge ideological differences emerged which were irrevocable and split them. In the end they HATED each other, Burr and Hamilton went to kill each other with pistols at dawn, at least 5 other sets did the same. They also refused to see the others side and insisted their views were right. There was a case where Madison (I think it was him) argued in front of the supreme court on what a section of the constitution that he wrote meant, but the supreme court disagreed and said "you are wrong, what you wrote means something else". (Similar to what Greg and Peter are doing with Satoshi's writings today)
The thing that kept this hatred and irrevocable differences from spilling out of control was the democratic process they started (maybe not even fully understanding it), which forced an election and decision point every few years on a new direction. This process forced revolutions to be peaceful events that then most people accepted.
We see Bitcoin as a democratic entity that everyone can influence and set direction. And this was Satoshi's vision with distributed mining, P2P nodes, etc.
The problem is there is no set decision point built into Bitcoin that enables voting. Yes everyone can mine and accept or reject blocks, but without a set date to decide as an election does, it is near impossible to bring everyone together at the same time to change direction. For example if I decide to run a miner and mine 2MB blocks today, I would be kicked out and ignored. So I won't do this unless I know that at least 51% other miners are going to start doing the same thing at the same time. Without a set date for a decision point the current direction will be taken until it breaks.
If the major exchanges, merchants, etc. announce a BIP101 hard fork, it becomes an election and forces a set date to have that election. It will in effect be the first election Bitcoin has had. The problem I think XT had is it tried to do this but it had no date set and no decision point to rally around.
What is interesting about Bitcoin is post election both sides can continue on their own, the system can not force you to join the majority (unlike democracies). Greg and Luke can continue working on a 1MB by themselves if they want.
So:
1) We shouldn't be too worried that everyone is fucking mad (and it seams everyone on all sides are getting there). That is a part of a democratic decision making process (which Greg is trying to stop). The fact that so many people are so mad is a good thing, it means that many people today want Bitcoin to work. That is winning IMHO.
2) I believe we need to think about how Bitcoin can make the election processes easier. This is going to be the first time so there are no mechanisms for it. After it's done it should be made easier for the next time.
