Maybe a different religion, or especially political beliefs seems to be a big deal-breaker. Do you still find it worthwhile to keep them in your life?
I do. I have e.g. Christian Conservative friends, and Atheist Liberal ones, etc. I enjoy each one for what they are. I mean, nobody is perfect! (like me 😁)
I think so, but I’m not totally sure because certain topics are just too dangerous to discuss. Trying might seriously damage some relationships, even with relatives. I don’t know exactly what they believe and they don’t know exactly what I believe. If we knew, maybe we would agree to disagree but maybe we would never want to have anything to do with each other again.
The funny thing is that I’m talking about people who vote the same way I do. (I’m not counting a couple of conspiracy-theorist relatives whose ideas are too strange to be really offensive. They generally don’t bother to vote because they think the system is rigged anyway.) Would I ever be friends with people who didn’t vote the way I do? No, definitely not, although I would be polite to them unless they really pushed me.
I feel like the “Republicans and Democrats can’t be friends” thing has been true for my entire adult life. (I first voted in 2004.) However, “Democrats and other, different Democrats can’t be friends” is relatively new. I don’t even know how people these days do something like go on a date without reading each other’s manifestos first. I’m not even joking - I wouldn’t date someone whose views about, for example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were substantially different from mine no matter how compatible the two of us were otherwise. Do I put that on my dating profile?
Purity testing is real yo. Ofc Republicans and other, different Republicans are the same - they call them RINOs, so would the opposite now be a DINO?! 🤪
Yeah you could put that on your profile - I mean, why not, especially if it’s a genuine deal-breaker? (Unless you think people would like about it, but they could do that anyway regardless). Although there’s probably something more foundational than just their views on that singular topic - probably their views on compassion? Yeah, put your stance on that on your profile then?
I mean, on the one hand, that’s what conservatives do - divide, divide, divide, until there’s nobody else left besides oneself? On the other hand, that’s very much not what they actually do, bc the only thing that must NOT be tolerated is intolerance so… yes it’s intolerance, but there’s an actual reason for such, not just like skin color or genitalia or some such.
Innuendo Studios’ The Alt Right Playbook explains that in much greater depth if you need it - pyramid thinking vs. a flat landscape (which I am now questioning, bc obviously not everyone is equal, so what does all that really mean? Anyway, questioning things is good, for my type of mindset at least). One difference is that someone has no to little control over their skin color, whereas their attitude they very much (should) control.