But your main point is right, that things like memes often serve to push people away if you’re not already in the in-group.
Edited to add a space
That's actually kind of the point of this article, as I read it: political opinions are very malleable. Tribal identification is one mechanism by which they can be changed. If the tribe decides we're cutting taxes, we change our opinion to favor cutting taxes. If the tribe decides that trans identity is extremely important, we do too. Not because of any overt pressure but simply because of natural herd and instincts.
But self-interest is an even stronger hammer with which to shape political opinions. If it is strongly in my economic best interest to get an abortion, there's a pretty decent chance I'm gonna finagle my way to believing it's OK -- at least for me -- even if I "thought it was literal murder" before. It's easy enough to do because abortion has none of the physical hallmarks of literal murder (you know, struggling, screaming victims, blood everywhere, etc.) and society clearly treats it as a different thing, no matter where in the U.S. you live. I have noticed a similar pattern whereby rich liberal friends are slightly less in favor of eating the rich than poor liberal friends, even though the Twitter crowd has pretty much decided where they stand on this issue. Self-interest is a powerful motivator! Us rich folks like to talk about all the entitlements we support but we get a little less comfortable when it comes time to talk about who pays for them.
This is just a general rule, it doesn't apply universally by any means. Even this article suggested that there's just a 15% shift in personal opinion directly after a tribe opinion change. But I guess the change grows over time too. I hadn't heard a damn thing about illegal immigrants from my conservative father until about 2016. Now sometimes it seems like every third article he sends me is on that subject.
Hey, you know another interesting thing about this: everyone hates literal murder, but somehow murderers families often -- not always, but often -- come around to forgiving them. Sometimes they forgive the murderer so hard that they come to court to support them before they're even convicted, pay for lawyers, etc. You'd almost never do that for someone who wasn't family. Self-interest, family, and tribe are extremely powerful mutators of political and even moral opinion!
The number of clinic bombings and assassinations of abortion providers in the US particularly given how few there are in slem areas demonstrates that enough people believe it to feel compelled to act.
Sure people do. There are plenty of us. Even those of us who are atheist and/or pro-LGBT. It doesn’t strictly align with parties; for instance my own views are rather liberal except for this particular issue.
> Folks would lynch abortion providers -- not one or two, but en masse
This did not happen for a lot of other viewpoints throughout history that we now consider illegal and unthinkable. Those of us who are anti-abortion consider abortion to be much the same—it will take a long time to change society’s opinion but violence is not the answer to solving the problem.
What if it's state sanctioned? Where were all the people destroying nazi concentration camps?
I would also just note that there are policies that have been clearly demonstrated to reduce the number of abortions, but they require a small amount of spending. I struggle to believe that someone who believes abortion is literal murder would shrink from providing e.g. free contraceptives, given the alternative. Yet Republicans tend to be opposed to these things, certainly at the legislative level. The behavior and voting patterns just don't support the claim, IMO.
(This did happen with the Republicans in 2016
Republicans controlled Congress and held the Presidency for various times from 2001-2006.
Bear in mind, many people's politics and values have become very aligned: If you don't support someone's views on identity issues, for instance, they may not feel they can be friends with you anymore. If you consider abortion to be literal murder, the color it places on someone who supports or has had an abortion, may make friendship similarly challenging.