Something I’ve noticed about professional civility mourners is that when they mourn the divisions over political views, they rarely mention what those views are, or what effect they have. And they never notice that whatever offer of friendship the “right” is extending is contingent, and is not offered to everyone. And they never notice that for something so apparently trivial, the “right” is entirely unwilling to compromise on any of them. It turns out that to supremacists, political views aren’t bloodless abstracts at all; they actually matter a great deal more than we are meant to notice when it is time to make friends. They matter far more than the lives of queer people, for example—and we’re asked to respect those political views more than we are asked to respect those lives, and that is the contingency of the offer of friendship.
The laws that disenfranchise Black people are driven by political views, for example, as are the arrangements of power that put into power a governor who would install buzzsaws in rivers on the national border or separate migrant families. Disenfranchisement is divisive, and family separation more so, and a buzzsaw even more so, but not, apparently, as divisive as refusing to ignore disenfranchisement and buzzsaws for the sake of a contingent and exclusive offer of friendship.
Calling the bigotry and violence of fascist rhetoric “political differences” is lying by construction.
Divorces are on the rise because a lot of spouses have revealed themselves to be terrible human beings.
If you want to be friends then why aren’t you friendly?