Here in the US we'll refuse to interact with someone if we find out that they're part of the wrong tribe, but our political violence is pretty low on the scale of what's possible.
There, they have a lot of political violence and from what I understand quite divisive political issues that put people's lives and livelihoods at stake, but apparently they don't have the culture of avoiding talking about it altogether that we do and they don't attempt to avoid associating with anyone who disagrees with them.
But maybe the real take way here is that people in Indian should talk less about politics!
If someone is like, "Nah, those things are bad" then I'm happy to not associate with them because I find their beliefs abhorrent. It has nothing to do with tribal affiliation and everything to do with policy.
This is absolutely not how a lot of people operate.
I don't think it's unreasonable to live a morally comprehensive life. For example, I probably couldn't be friends with a white-supremacist even if they were kind, gentle, supportive, and caring. Some folks are able to look past those things and more power to them. I, however, couldn't sleep at night.
In my mind, the moral, healthy, productive, and pro-social thing would be to continue friendship.
I dont think shunning people builds bridges or helps anyone.
Then again, my generation grew up with stories like black activists who befriended KKK members and slowly converted them with compassion and challenging their preconceived notions.
The complete refusal to interact with someone who disagrees with you is a relatively new phenomenon that seems to have risen alongside social media.
We most certainly did not. Point to an era where there wasn't political violence in the US.
Jim Crow? Civil rights era? WTO Protests? Vietnam war protests? Rodney King? Stonewall? Like... this country has been violent about politics since this country was a country.
Growing up I was afraid to be even remotely "non-manly" because I was so worried I'd be dragged behind someone's truck.
No, we didn't. Look up what happened in the 1960s. And even that was mild compared to what went on in election campaigns in the 19th century in the US.
You must have forgotten the US Civil War, plus all the turbulence of the 1960s.
The big difference there was that, for the most part, the two sides were geographically separated from each other.
>The complete refusal to interact with someone who disagrees with you is a relatively new phenomenon that seems to have risen alongside social media.
If you're thinking of the early-to-mid 20th century, things have changed. America has become much more diverse, and co-mingled (in the past, immigrant and other minority groups tended to keep to themselves and not socially interact so much with other groups). White European-descended people are no longer the overwhelming majority (remember, immigrants in the past mostly came from Europe), religion has lost much of its power and many of its believers, homosexuality has become far more accepted, basically one side feels existentially threatened, and the other side oppressed.
