[dzink]

I’m an immigrant from Eastern Europe who moved to the US decades ago. Eastern Europeans are direct - you speak your mind, so there are no assumptions or miss-understandings. Families live close to where they were born in sparser areas and relationships matter, but there is also forgiveness.

I have friends who come from Welsh and Swiss backgrounds and would have layers of internal inhibition before saying something out of fear of embarrassment or multitude of other concerns. A lot of time that leads to them assuming and assumptions can be wrong. They do a lot less verbal or video contact with family members, almost intentionally so, but would still get together in person (broader context i suspect). A lot of relationships on that side degrade quickly when contact is not made for a while - assumptions upon assumptions of offense or who knows what seems to erode the relationship. So when you meet again it’s almost like you have to earn the friendship again.

Politics in this country involves those two mixes of people and waaaay more. The cultural spread, the political spectrum spread, forms a matrix too big to navigate in 99.9 % of conversations The in-person interactions are not long enough to peel all layers of the political onion and the relationship trust onion before you get to the core that you both agree on. Instead there are often unsaid assumptions, experiences, trauma that won’t fit in a tweet and if they do, nobody has time to read it. The more complicated things get and the lower the attention span, the harder it is to invest time and get a favorable relationship outcome if you discuss politics, so you’re better off not even trying.