The easy answer is that weaponised kindness and tolerance are not actually kindness and tolerance - the word 'weaponised' is the differentiator.

Refraining from ever saying anything against a person's political views is genuinely kindness, or at least it's hard to argue that it isn't. It just does more harm in other ways.

The redefinition of tolerance to mean deference to other people's absurd views is a travesty IMO, but that battle has already been lost.

In any case this "easy answer" is useless in practice; arguing that these policies are unkind or intolerant at best gets you debating semantics, and is usually even less effective than that.

> The redefinition of tolerance to mean deference to other people's absurd views is a travesty IMO, but that battle has already been lost.

I'm not sure anything has been redefined.

Tolerance is the ability to live in a world alongside people whose views you don't share.

Kindness is the ability to treat those people with respect, despite disagreeing with them.

It would be nice to see influential people expressing these views, instead of making things worse.

It's basically impossible to provide examples without the conversation devolving, so I'll leave it there.

Strawmen all round:

- Refraining from ever saying anything against a person's political views is not kindness. It's possible to disagree kindly, which is indeed the point at issue here

- "The redefinition of tolerance" that you mention is not tolerance, but a convenient misdirection for politicians and other talking heads to use when justifying their demonisation of whichever outgroup is currently the target. The choice is presented as either maintaining the status quo at the expense of the minority, or this twisted phantom version of tolerance that is worse for everyone, thereby shutting down honest respectful discussion.

Weaponized “kindness” sounds a little bit oxymoronic to me, would what’s being weaponized not be closer to “niceness”?

A non-paradoxical variation: "We wish to be kind to party A, the good people, but to do that we must be mean to party B, the bad people."

People thought he was in their tribe. Maybe he was. But now he's tribeless. So he's the outgroup and thus bad. That's literally the basis.

Tribeless? I thought he was pretty hardcore Republican?

hes anything but a hard-core republican. iirc he has always voted democrat unril not long ago

And yet almost everything he says on Twitter is highly indicative of the contrary, so who knows what he really thinks.

Rupert Murdoch, the guy Elon spent the Super Bowl with, might know a bit of his position.

I'm lost, are you talking about Trump or Elon?

He voted for Obama, Clinton and Biden, so no, not really.

I mean Obama was just a strong choice, and what exactly was the alternative when Clinton and Biden ran? Honestly, not casting a completely insane vote doesn't mean much.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. A hardcore Republican votes for Republican candidates, of which there was reasonably popular versions of for each election. I wasn’t claiming he was a Democrat, just that he wasn’t a “hardcore Republican”.

I was just assuming you could be "hardcore" and still somewhat pragmatic or reasonable, but I'm with ya. (eg.: I'm "hardcore pro-science", but I wouldn't vote for someone I thought was a pro-science evil person. This example doesn't compare to what we're talking about, it's just to illustrate my own point in this comment.)

The people who vote for a candidate generally don't think they're evil either.

I'd argue that most people don't think, period... haha.

Playing devil’s advocate because I agree with you, but there are plenty of people who would have said:

“I mean McCain/Romney was just a strong choice, and what was the alternative (to voting for Trump) when Clinton and Biden ran? Honestly, not casting a completely insane vote (for Clinton or Biden) doesn’t mean much”.

Granted there does seem to have been a division between McCain/Romney voters and Trump voters.

McCain and Romney would not be my preference, but they're not even remotely in the same universe/category/crazy-league/game as Trump. For me it has little to do with affiliation to any of your political parties in the US (not my fight, I'm Canadian). I cannot see a reasonable and/or decent person of moral competence casting a vote for Trump.

> I cannot see a reasonable and/or decent person of moral competence casting a vote for Trump.

This is an extremely bigoted statement. It's highly ironic, given the morally superior position you are assuming for yourself, that you don't appear able to see that.

I'm very comfortable staying on this side of History.

It's a fallacy to think that every choice in every situation is reasonable. More than one choice can be reasonable at the same time, but some choices are patently unreasonable.

You are saying that every person who voted for Trump is an unreasonable and/or morally deficient person. It is highly arrogant to put yourself in the position to make that call and, as I've already said, only demonstrates a bigoted mindset on your part (that you think you can universally define such a large group of people as inferior based on a single, and very shallow determinant).

I can see where both of you are coming from.

Take a given single issue that is a flash point between liberals and conservatives. As a liberal you can say it’s unreasonable. A conservative can see it as completely reasonable and logical.

Furthermore what one country’s liberals can see as unreasonable can be considered quite reasonable by another country’a liberals.

It’s really nuanced. For what it’s worth I think Trump is the worst and most embarrassing President in the history of the US. I have friends and family on the conservative side who voted for McCain and Romney who likewise think so and held their noses to vote for Clinton and Biden.

But at the same time I can see why someone would have reasonably voted for Trump. I completely disagree with them. Very little parts of my life, desires, and visions for the future of this country (or the world in general) intersects with theirs. I hope the vast majority of their vision for humanity never comes to pass. But I can still see their reasons.

Just to clarify what I mean when I use words like "reasonable", "patently unreasonable", or "correct"...

- "correct" / "incorrect": for objective questions with no wiggle room. 2+2=4 is correct. Correctness, when applicable, only allows one answer.

- "patently unreasonable": for something to be "patently unreasonable", there has to be no apparent or articulated line of reasoning which can lead to the conclusion. It may not be possible or feasible to prove incorrectness. It is patently unreasonable to vote for anyone for no reason, but it cannot be said to be incorrect. It is patently unreasonable to vote for a political party just because that's what your family does, or to engage with politics as if it were a mere spectator sport, but it cannot be said to be incorrect.

- "reasonable": without any regard for whether you would come to the same conclusion, something is reasonable if there exists at least one line of reasoning which can justify the conclusion. Reasonableness, when applicable, allows for multiple answers.

I am able to say things like "it is reasonable to vote for a political party I do not like", and "it is patently unreasonable to vote for my favourite party in a given situation".

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> Take a given single issue that is a flash point between liberals and conservatives. As a liberal you can say it’s unreasonable. A conservative can see it as completely reasonable and logical.

Given the definitions above (which are roughly the same as used by judges in admin law, I'm not just making stuff up here), the liberal person in your example is not being reasonable, and the conservative person is probably failing to distinguish between reasonableness and correctness.

> It is highly arrogant to put yourself in the position to make that call

I don't disagree, but it is my position in this case.