
and a huge part of the problem here IS in-group/out-group dynamics. You are not any less guilty of ideological bias. But that was never the problem. Shit gets ugly when you let your ideological bias (against their ideas) turn into affective bias (against them as individuals). No “side” is innocent of that.
You can check it yourself: look up More in Common's "Perception Gap" study. Both sides wildly overestimate how extreme the other side is. I've got lived data too. I grew up neoliberal and eventually dropped partisanship altogether, and from the outside it's clear the left makes enemies too, just different ones. Any "side" only exists because it's defined against another one. That's the trap.
Genuine question though: "okay with gays and Muslims as long as they assimilate and pay enough taxes" is conditional tolerance. Most people on any side wouldn't want their own acceptance to depend on passing a test. And "all genders (2)" kind of answers itself. I'm not trying to dunk. I'd rather hear what you actually think "assimilated" means, because that's where the real disagreement is.
“The far left is annoying and childish at worst” They literally shot an innocent man and celebrated it. And then they celebrate Luigi for killing another innocent man. Like in 2010s yeah Republicans were pretty bad with white supremacy groups and all. But by now they’ve lost all their influence. They are irrelevant nowadays. The far left is the one causing almost all the violence in the USA in 2026. The far right are just normal people who want to live in a safe country.
I'm genderqueer. I have just as much at stake as you, and I still won't write anyone off as less than human. You put "people" in quotes. That's the same thing they do to us. You're right that you can't reason with pure prejudice, but that cuts both ways. If you go in already sure someone's an animal, you've closed the door yourself.
Orthodox literally means "correct belief" (orthos meaning correct or straight and doxa meaning belief or opinion). Tradition is just one way an orthodoxy gets established. My point wasn't about tradition, it's about any group claiming authority to declare which beliefs are correct and treating dissenters as heretics. That can happen on the left just as easily as the right.
"Heresy" comes from the Greek for "choice," so a heretic was someone who chose their own belief. The witch trials happened because an authority defined correct belief and treated deviation as a crime. Even doubting witchcraft could get you accused. The hunters thought they were the good guys. The danger is certainty plus power to punish dissent, and no side is immune.
Healthcare and wages are policies, and policies can be tested. We can study outcomes and show what works, and I'd support them on that basis. But you said they're correct because of an intrinsic belief about what people deserve. That's a moral value, not a fact you can verify. I probably share it. The problem starts when a value gets treated as "ideologically correct" and people who disagree get treated as heretics instead of people to persuade.