By conflating Trump supporters with Republicans, does that imply you are breaking against president-elect Biden's many earnest pleas for reconciliation and unification of the country?
Or perhaps defining Trump supporting Republicans as separate and distinct from Republicans in general, it gives a path in which a reconciliation can be achieved with that part of the party which actually has the best interests of the country at heart and genuinely believes in it's founding principles. And hopefully that part of the party that is just in it to get as much as they can for them and theirs and bring back the good old days where anyone who wasn't wealthy with a white penis didn't get a say in anything is small enough that it can sod off and die in a corner somewhere.
There's always going to be extremists, and if reconciliation
has to include them to then it's always going to fail. The goal of reconciliation shouldn't be total unity, it should be getting enough people together that they can rationally discuss matters and accept majority decisions even if they're not in accordance with their personal beliefs.
Yep, it’s the Paradox of Tolerance time
"In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance." Popper expands upon this, writing, "I do not imply for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force..."
I'm not sure how much of a paradox it really is, as it requires viewing speech and behaviour as absolute equals. I feel like there's a decent argument that they're not the same, and for pretty good reasons.
One can be incredibly permissive in the expression of speech and ideas, which many would consider to be "tolerant". That does not mean that one can't also have some pretty hard lines about acceptable behaviour and enforce those rigorously. Some might consider that "intolerant", but I'd say that's more like the basic thing that separates any society from anarchy. Describing someone as being "intolerant" of assault and murder is really stretching how the English language works, eliminating those things is an easy and obvious way in which the society improves for the vast majority of people.
Unfortunately, this tends to turn into one of those definition things where the person talking about "intolerance" really means "I don't get to do what I want to" without actually much introspection about the greater ramifications. Trump is a perfect example, it's intolerance when he doesn't get his way but good strong societal structure when it's working in his favour.
