I honestly find it shocking that so many people can't be friends with someone who thinks differently. Am I really hearing this correctly? What a close-minded community I am a part of, that's kind of embarrassing to be honest.
I mean... based on your username, you're a heretic anyway. Just because your LS1 makes 50% more power, more reliably, doesn't have the rat's nest of unlabeled vacuum lines with random restrictor pills, doesn't really affect the weight balance that much, doesn't require a complex twin turbo setup, lasts nearly forever, and improves fuel economy doesn't mean it has
any business in an RX-7! :p
But, yes, you're hearing it correctly. It's pretty common on the left. "Either you think exactly like me, who is obviously right and true and correct about all things, or you're one of
them." Look at the animosity between the Hillary supporters and the Bernie supporters. I'd say it was before the election, but it's still going on from what I've seen. You see a bit of a "circular firing squad" going on where everyone is just lashing out at everyone else, even though they're theoretically on the same side.
Look at all the people (again, mostly on the left) who were, during and after the 2016 elections, unfriending anyone they thought might be not their particular brand of left.
So it's quite common. I agree it's a good bit disconcerting how many people on this particular forum seem to agree with the assertion that you can't be friends with someone you disagree with politically, but it shouldn't be surprising if you pay attention. In my experience, forums like this tend to be more heavily left leaning, with people who have more conservative opinions either not expressing them because it's not worth dealing with the dogpile and bannings, or simply not as active on the internet because they'd rather be out, say, ruining a perfectly good RX-7. :p Most of the conservatives I know don't spend that much time on internet forums, or at least not the left leaning forums. There are plenty of good places to hang out that are open to a wide range of viewpoints.
I am baffled as to why differing beliefs would be a bad thing, let alone a deal breaker for a friendship.
Because it requires one to be able to actually back one's beliefs and have a solid debate/discussion about them. Which is, sadly, harder and harder to find - on
both sides.
For me it's because certain beliefs deny basic equality and human rights to groups of people. I don't want to be friends with someone who believes that women, LGBT people, people of other races, refugees, etc. are less worthy humans. Differing opinions on economic policy is one thing, but plenty of people hold dehumanizing views that would make me lose respect for them and be unable to carry on a friendship.
Are you making the common mistake of confusing "equality" with "sameness"? It's been a thing on the left for a while now (at least in certain circles) to insist at the top of their lungs that gender is a social construct and that men and women are identical in all ways, so any difference in outcome must be the result of the evil patriarchy and oppression (insert your preferred group's terms for the same general concept here if you don't like those). Yet, at the same time, they're going on about how hormone replacement therapy must be covered by every sort of health insurance and it's cruel if that's not covered. You can't have both. Either men and women are the same and there's no difference, or there are fundamental chemical differences between men and women that require changing the chemical balance of a human to "change" from one to the other.
A particular source of annoyance, at least for me, is the insistence that physical standards for physically demanding jobs need to be different for men and women. Firefighters, police officers, etc. A fire hose or unconscious person does not magically get easier to handle if it detects that a woman is handling it, so there's no good reason that the physical standards should be different. Yes, that puts you at odds with the fact that, in general, women aren't as physically strong as men. The bell curves certainly overlap, but the centers differ, and the absolute values are not even remotely close. The absolute deadlift record for men is 1102lb, the same record for women is 672lb (61% of the male record). That's by no means even remotely close to "same" - even if they both are (and should be) equal under the law.
And on the topic of refugees, an opinion of "I don't believe we should let millions of people from a radically different culture, who show no interest in assimilating, into our country" doesn't mean one thinks that they're subhuman. It just means that one sees this as, based on history, a really dumb idea. Even some of the people on the left who initially supported it have been rethinking the wisdom of that.
In general, I see a trend (again, heavily from the left) of assuming that anyone who holds opposing (or even slightly differing) views must hold the worst possible version of them, for purely evil reasons, and therefore they are an evil person. There's no nuance, and there's especially no attempts (anymore) to find some common ground and actually understand the other people's point of view and reasons for it. It's a lost art in the age of snippy social media responses, and phones have made it
far worse, because you don't even have a proper keyboard to type on. A good computer keyboard is 4-5x as fast as even a fast phone keyboard, so it leads to more expanded responses. You may be able to, for instance, guess that I'm typing this response on a computer, not a phone.
The correct approach, IMO, is to have the discussions in person. And, no, not everyone you know with an opposing viewpoint will be up for that, or will be interested in an actual discussion/debate. But some will. And it's far harder to decide a person is irredeemably evil when you're sitting across a table from them (preferably over a few pints - even better from a pitcher, because then you
know you have some common ground).
If we weren't able to put our differences aside, how would we ever engage in productive conversation and make eventual progress? This is a major issue America is facing.
Unfortunately, one of the fairly common things that happens in an empire/nation in decline is an increase in political polarization. We're certainly seeing that, and, based on history, it doesn't resolve. So... good luck!