It works like having neighbors who voted for the other guy (or god help them, even gave his campaign some money!) but still come over for dinner and let their kids play baseball with your kids.

Politics has become utterly toxic.

I think part of the problem is that it's become an identity thing. That's been intentional on the part of political campaign strategists, since it helps them.

It's distressing to see how successful their self-interested manipulation has been.

I'm talking about this in broad terms, not any specific issue, and certainly not just this one. And it's both sides of the issues, not merely one party or the other.

It's the most insidious kind of marketing there is.

Perhaps this is a cultural difference then. I'm not from the US. Most of my friends and family are Scottish. Politics (in the broadest sense) is typically the number one topic of discussion in most situations. From dinners with friends to family get togethers to hacker meetups.

Do you never talk about politics with people who's views you disagree with? Is that just out of fear of offending them? What the hell do you talk about, the weather?

Generally speaking, the more culturally and economically homogeneous a group is, the less painful and divisive (and more echo-chambery, of course) discussing national politics is. You have to keep in mind that "national politics" in the US has largely devolved into a list of wedge issues in most people's minds; most of the things people might be able to find common ground on isn't even part of the national political debate and gets handled by either local government or the Federal civil service bureaucracy.

There are neighborhoods which are fairly uniform in their political leanings where politics is commonly discussed, mostly in the "us-vs-them, go us, evil them" way; pretty reminiscent of some religions, actually. There are families like that too.

There are other neighborhoods, and families, where having that sort of discussion all the time would mostly serve to make people upset at each other, precisely because it would so quickly devolve into an "us-vs-them" argument but with both sides represented. People generally handle this by either being miserable and fighting all the time or by agreeing to disagree and moving on with all the many other aspects of life that don't involve Federal government intervention. Does it really seem bizarre to you that people would pick the latter over the former?

> Do you never talk about politics with people who's views you disagree with?

It depends on the views, the person, and what the point would be. Generally talking about positions people decided on with their brains is worthwhile. Talking about positions people decided on with their guts is less likely to be so. Figuring out which is which can be hard.

> What the hell do you talk about, the weather?

Well, some people handle this by self-segregating in echo chambers and then "discussing politics". ;)

For me personally, I do talk to people about the weather, books I or they have read recently, local politics, parenting, food.... National politics is pretty far down the list of things that are interesting to talk about with most people I end up talking to.

It's possible to talk to people about politics, even those you strongly disagree with, and keep it amicable.

The fact that it seems alien to people to be able to do that indicates something has gone deeply, deeply wrong with politics.

Luckily, if you live in a place where terrible people barely exist (NYC, SF, Massachusetts, etc.), it isn't really an issue. There are only a few times that I've run into an issue from just openly stating "homophobes are awful" as if it was the weather - the typical response is as if I had said "it's raining" - "well, duh".

My general approach is to be glad I pissed those people off, because I now know to never associate with them again.

This might be harder in, say, Texas.