Young Dems more likely to despise the other party
&quot;The only explanation for allowing abortion is because they are evil and they want to kill babies. No other explanation exists.&quot;<p>This view is widely considered to be a fringe one. No serious person espouses it. You don&#x27;t hear it on Fox News, but Alex Jones will say it and his audience will mostly laugh at him. A small fraction of them agree.<p>On the other hand:<p>&quot;The only explanation for limiting immigration is racism. No other explanation exists.&quot;<p>&quot;The only explanation for prioritizing action against illegal immigration is white supremacy. No other explanation exists&quot;<p>This interpretation of the &quot;other side&quot;&#x27;s policy is universal. You&#x27;ll hear it on CNN, MSNBC, late night comedy. Celebrities will tweet about it. It is espoused by folks who say it seriously, framing it as some kind of serious battle of good versus evil. There is no room in the conversation for debating it, therefore you despise anyone who takes this kind of view. Anyone who tries to debate it will be labelled one of Skeletor&#x27;s minions.<p>In fact, one of the more charitable explanations of these points of view are things like &quot;unconscious racism&quot; like the evil spirits of old who would possess you and make you think evil things.<p>After centuries of orthodoxy, in the west there used to be a culture of enlightenment and free enquiry. In the third world we have never really had a serious understanding of the importance of these topics, and the enlightenment movements had a relatively minor impact. There have been occasional spurts of it, but generally there is no mature understanding of freedom amongst the population. In my country a comedian was arrested for allegedly planning to tell a particular joke in his forthcoming standup set. This kind of authoritarianism is supported because there is widespread support for blasphemy laws, and it is a fairly mainstream position.<p>It seems like western countries are regressing to this kind of worldview, embracing blasphemy laws and the culture of blasphemy where certain &quot;haraam&quot; topics are so unholy that they cannot even be debated, and any infidel who has these views must be removed from society, &quot;by any means necessary&quot;. The only difference between this and previous attempts is that the pantheon is some bureaucrats and politicians. I&#x27;m reminded of a Stephen Colbert episode where he announced that the President had fired James Comey, and the crowd applauded, and he sprung into action to inform them that James Comey was now on the side of the angels.<p>As a result of these systems, there is no question of beings friends with an infidel, you can only despise them. Even if one wants to challenge this prevailing orthodoxy, there is fear of being associated with infidels - so for self-preservation, one must go along with this point of view.<p>There was a TV host - Ellen DeGeneres who is a friend of George W. Bush. When photos of them laughing together and enjoying a sporting event, were published, it became a national conversation about whether she should be held accountable for this friendship. She then had to make a public explanation as to why she was his friend.<p>This kind of thing exists amongst Republicans too, but it falls flat most of the time. Every now and then there will be a story like Bill Clinton shook hands with Louis Farrakhan or some stupid outrage like that, but it (rightly) doesn&#x27;t really get much traction and nobody gives it the time of day, because there ought to be freedom of association, and reducing a human being to who they shake hands with is a terrible way of thinking.