This sounds nice, but what if your neighbor's political views are an existential threat to you personally? What if they don't want you to live in their neighborhood because of the color of your skin, or if they don't think you're a fit parent because you let your kid wear certain clothes? There are some things about which we can have friendly disagreements, like Laffer curves, school vouchers, the death penalty, environmental regulations, or whatever. But there are other disagreements which mean we cannot be friends.
What if you were friendly with your neighbor, but on the way to return a shovel you get hit by a bus?
Point being: you're dreaming up edge cases, presumably as a justification for... what? Refusing to engage with people who don't wear their political views like a badge on their chest?
If your stance honestly is "we cannot be friends unless I know your political views", then those who keep their views to themselves in the face of that are wise.
In my experience, yes, the irredeemable bigot is rare. For everyone else, regardless of whether their political views are unknown to you or they are threatening your personal way of life, the world will be a better place for you being good neighbors with them. Not to mention that it will improve your own living situation as well.
Most bigotry doesn't come from an inherent maliciousness or evil. It's often just limited experience and never having had reason to reflect on one's views. If you instinctively go "fuck off bigot", you're not only not helping, you're their mirror image.
To be clear, there's a point at which you have to be intolerant of intolerance, but starting off with that is not only counterproductive by reinforcing echo chambers and increasing division, it also makes you not unlike the thing you're opposed to.
Xenophobia and racial (or religious ) animus are hardly edge cases. On the contrary, they are the default setting for our species, as evidenced by (flips through history book) the last few millennia.
Bigotry is innate and one has to fight it. And that's exactly chmod775's point - stop being a bigot towards other people's reasonable opinions, stop being dramatic, stop making a mountain out of a molehill.
Then you live next to them and let them borrow a cup of sugar or ask to borrow one from them and collect their mail while they’re away and thank them when they let you know you left a light on when you left for work the other day. And realize that your hangups, quirks, and beliefs are just as offensive to them as theirs are to yours but that doesn’t mean either one of you is. Or a good neighbor that can’t crack a beer and just live next door to one another.
> Then you live next to them and let them borrow a cup of sugar or ask to borrow one from them and collect their mail while they’re away and thank them when they let you know you left a light on when you left for work the other day.
You would have liked my grandmother, who shared your opinion that kindness between neighbors can heal political rifts.
Unfortunately it didn't work out so well for her, as despite her kindness, the neighbors sent her to Dachau anyway.
Was it really her neighbors that sent her there or a police/military? I very much doubt that.
But let's play the hypothetical.
- Would your grandmother's fate be better if instead of kindness she would be spewing vitriol? Don't think so, the situation would have been even worse, much faster.
- What about the other side of the coin - about all of those people, who survived, because they were nice and friendly?
- In general, always having the same strategy, no matter what is happening around you, is dumb. When the environment changes, so should the behavior. Kindness often helps, but not against wild animals like bears, nature forces like tornadoes, and the faceless state bureucracy.
Once again with the implication that conservatives are equivalent to Nazis and therefore should be treated with vitriol. The hyperbole isn’t unwarranted and the whole point.
That's not the implication. Read it again, stop playing the victim. The point is simply that hate is not rational, and that your proposal of kindness does nothing to assuage the rampant ignorance and xenophobia that animates evil ideology.
Would you prefer a Communist rather than Nazi parable? Either way works.
I don't want to sound hyperbolic, but what if you were a jew, and you applied that reasoning to your hitler-loving neighbors back in nazi germany?
Modern politics is fundamentally different from the way things used to be. The right-wing political parties in america today have almost nothing at their core besides hatred for marginalized communities. Demonizing trans people, immigrants, muslims, "communists"- that's it. Everything else is just the whims of an impulsive imbecile - the tariffs, the war with Iran, kidnapping the president of Venezuela, the belligerence towards _greenland_ (?!?!?), etc...
And the purpose behind demonizing them it to energize a shrinking demographic base to compensate for how many reasonable people they've driven away. So at this point, the ones who remain under the maga umbrella have been exposed to so much vitriolic propaganda that they are just at a fever pitch of hatred at all times. I've seen it countless times in my own life- People who used to say that Obama was naive and inexperienced and that his policies were misguided, but who now say he's a muslim jihadi who wanted to destroy america. And so on with many other political issues.
I have several close relatives who used to be like bob, or van- but MAGA has changed them. They are just completely dripping with hate, now. And if I was a member of one of the communities they've been frothed up against, I don't know if I'd feel safe trying to engage with them like the person on the OP.
> what if your neighbor's political views are an existential threat to you personally?
Then you are uniquely placed to show them you're not the baddie they thought you were. Say hello, introduce yourself, smile and wave, bring cookies or stuff from your backyard garden once in a while, be personable.
Firearms lobby, institutionalized prejudice in law enforcement, Justice system, etc all have made this additional labor of the marginalized minority extraordinarily dangerous.
> Then you are uniquely placed to show them you're not the baddie they thought you were.
Great idea! If only we had thought of this sooner. We could have avoided Jim Crow and segregation if only black people had thought to be friendly to racist whites!
If you're in physical danger, then flee. I'm not talking about that. There's a bigger reality than your street - pay attention and be wise.
But at the same time, it is true than many white kids had racist parents but chose not to be racist themselves, largely because they rubbed shoulders with black kids and learned they had a lot in common with them. Don't underestimate the power of patience, kindness, generosity, and general personability to win, eventually. It took a generation of integration before racism disappeared from most US neighborhoods.
> I haven't talked personally with a racist in probably 25-30 years.
Let me guess, you mostly mingle with white people? It's a different story among Latinos, Asians (toward blacks and other Asians), but especially among African-Americans.
The essay makes a token gesture toward this ("privilege and power dynamics play a complex and unavoidable role"), but ultimately Marco, who is a rich straight white male unaffected by any meaningful or existential prejudice, is willing to overlook those views (which do not impact him) as things that do not matter.
