Do you want to live your life in an echo chamber? What opportunity is there going to be for growth if you are always only going to be surrounded by people who think exactly as you do? There might be some appeal to this on the front but there is a risk as well, it poses the potential for little opportunity as far as intellectual growth. Being challenged on ideas can help to strengthen them or point out weaknesses that might dissolve the idea altogether, it's important to be exposed to that then is it not?
Narcissistic thinking?
Labeling people as unworthy of your time or relationship because they hold different political views, and assuming that because of those views they lack empathy for example, then moving to disassociate with them over it, this seems to stem from a bit of narcissistic thinking.
Where is the humility that you could be missing a piece of the puzzle in this scenario?
For example, if you hate everyone with different political viewpoints than you, this excludes the possibility that you could be wrong in how you view and understand the world. If you assume that your political views and party voting doesn't cause harm to others then you might be surprised to find a variety of arguments to the contrary and it's probably better to remain open minded and operate with a bit of maturity in being able to stomach associating with people who think different than yourself.
Why use your political views, which supposedly are superior in their morality and compassion, to dehumanize other people? To use them as an excuse to deem others unworthy and garbage worth disposing of? Why craft an environment where you will only be exposed to a self-serving narrative? Is this how critical thinking is fostered?....
Understanding someone's political perspective doesn't translate into condoning or adopting their views, this can overlook the shared humanity that we might have, and political views alone don't encompass all that a person is.
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These patterns repeat over time. Politics in practice, is reaching a meaningful threshold of consensus about some topic or clusters of topics. Our brains by design, evolution, or conditioning prioritize threats, negative information or information about a danger to our ongoing existence pings with significantly more signal strength.
Politicians, spokespeople, and pundits take advantage of that. Even good news is often coupled with bad news or negative commentary to elicit a response. Threats and negative things certainly exist, but you may have noticed the pundits with the largest following on social media have the most negative feeds.
Social media has accelerated this because it allows for faster transmission, more robust clustering, and faster attainment of consensus thresholds. Social media also incentivizes a form of operant conditioning. If you express the wrong opinion and someone comes along and mocks you for your bad thoughts, the person mocking you is likely to be given validation or reinforcement for the mockery—"You owned him," etc.
Real threats and dangers do exist. Locally, we had a political action committee try to capture several county-level offices. I and others formed bipartisan (technically tripartisan) coalitions of voters and volunteers to stop them. We did this with conscious respect for each other, where we agreed and had a strong and compelling mutual interest.
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