Comment by watwut

> I think essentially tolerating other peoples opinions and trying to understand where they are coming from is more useful than applying purity tests to your friends and family.

Most of the time this is just being an enabler, who excuses, makes up rationales and blames "the other side" for not being nice enough to extremists. Especially when we talk with about fascist close groups. People who say this achieve only limitations on the opposition to extremists. They rarely or never manage to move extremist into the center.

> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.

Why are you so sure? There are plenty of conservatives who openly talk about it. It is not being tolerant when you decide that no one is allowed to do that observation. You are not being neutral here, you are biasing the discussion toward the extremism when you do it.