It seems impossible to think that anyone finds identity politics tolerable. Although they’re designed to make us feel like “our side” is better than “their side” all they really do is create division. As identities collide with more and more ferocity it seems like we’ve become stuck in a whirlpool that will drown us in hate for one another.
This might be in part because politics today have no nuance. (Or maybe it’s the other way around. It’s kind of a “chicken or the egg” problem.) There’s no room to say that you’re in favor of this idea from one party but not another idea from the same party. People group you into one enormous set of beliefs or another, regardless of what you actually believe.
This is one of the reasons that the #NormalContact movement intends to keep such a narrow focus. If we can establish extremely narrow perspectives on lot so of issues that can cross party identity then maybe we can start to respect each other for the common ground we share. We can recognize what we like about each other and connect again for the first time in a long time.
The idea of normal contact gets lumped in with right-wing and pro-Trump causes too often. Either the science makes sense or it doesn’t. (Spoiler: the science behind #NormalContact makes a ton of sense.) There’s nothing political about whether the science is justifiable or not. It’s a human issue, not a political one, and we’re definitely humans first. The identity of “human” should dominate identity politics, not the identity of a party.