It can be common for cultural homogenity and alienation of others to be disguised as compassion. This often takes the form of “Way of thinking or policy X is best for everyone, therefore anyone who proposes policy Y or way of thinking X+1 is a bad person”.
You will find people who masquerade behind this intolerance and call it tolerance. They insist their way is best for everyone and use tactics to shut down opposing viewpoints rather than engaging with them. For example, someone who supports the war on drugs might say “I just don’t think those around our society should need to suffer for other’s bad choices” and then accuse you of supporting this absurd idea if you argue with them, despite evidence to the contrary. Another person might claim that they support social movement X and anyone who doesn’t is a/an Y, then fill the Y in with their insult of choice, often implying lack of intelligence/empathy. Go on twitter once, you will see this dynamic.
These viewpoints fundamentally lack compassion for the different other, which is a term I’m using to mean “the ability to respect viewpoints that are not one’s own”. This means respect for the religions of others when you don’t agree with their policy, though one might draw reasonable lines at violence or other such things (a large part of this blog post is to highlight that we need to take viewpoints with a grain of salt and the benefit of the doubt – if you start arguing with me and say “so you think we should support all extremist views” or something along those lines, I will ignore you.”). Note I said respect, not support. You do not have to participate in someone’s ideas to allow other people to live their lives in accordance with their values.
I believe the lack of compassion for people we don’t like or agree with has lead to a lot of strife and will continue to do so. If you have compassion for people who are hurting, that is good. To have compassion for people you actively dislike is even better. You do not need to tolerate malicious action, but once again, that is not what I am saying. If they are living their life, and you are living yours, just let that happen, even if you don’t like it. No sense persecuting the people in a tiny house because YOU think it is an unsafe living condition.