I don’t mind one bit if I’m not a “trustworthy ally” of a political party or movement. That sounds a bit sheepish to me. I don’t think I agree 100% with any single person either.
Yeah, my response to someone telling me I wasn't a "trustworthy ally" in politics would be some slightly less geekish version of "I'm not your torchbearer, sir.".
The problem is, you can either be slavishly loyal to an ideal, or to a political party.
If you're slavishly loyal to a political party, you can't truly hold any ideals. Because sooner or later the party will betray you. In my lifetime I've seen both political parties make massive shifts in their professed opinions.
Look at the Democrat party. They march in lockstep to a greater degree than the republicans. Politically speaking, it's one of their strengths - and I've often lamented it. Democrats don't generally have to worry about what percentage of their members are going to betray them on an upcoming vote. It's a very small number, and the ones that will (like Manchen) are notorious. But the flip side is, how many Democrat politicians are both nominally religious, and yet hold views their church condemns, just as an example? Hell, the catholic diocese have tried to make their displeasure known by denying some of them Communion. You have to betray your personal ideals to function like that.
On the other side of the relationship, these are the mythical ~20% of the voter base that each party has that will, come hell or high water, always vote for one party. Although honestly, I think it's higher than that anymore, but that's still the number everyone uses. These are the useful idiots.
If you're slavishly loyal to an ideal, on the other hand, you just become an angry, insular idealist yelling about how you can't trust anyone to be loyal. Because the vast majority of people are going to disagree with you about some important issues to some extent. Because they have their own ideals. There is a reason that a generation or two ago, it was normal for
friends to argue politics. As part of friendly social interaction. And then still
be friends the next day.
As an example, despite normalloy tending to hold conservative / right wing ideals, there are certainly some issues I don't on. One of them is the death penalty. I am ardently against it. Not because I don't believe, as a matter of philosophy, that the state doesn't have the right, but rather because as a practical matter, the state screws up. It's basically the ultimate manifestation of Blackstone's ratio, for me. Since it's impossible to guarantee the government never executes an innocent man by mistake, I don't believe they have any business being allowed to execute people. An innocent person who spends time in prison has been wronged, but there may be some attempt to redress that wrong. If they are dead, they are just dead. Given that, I don't see a compelling argument to allow execution, or any benefit it will serve that life in prison will not... save for sating bloodlust. There isn't even an economic argument for it, given how long it takes an the expenses involved. And I've had more than a few "excited" arguments about the subject with friends who believe other wise. Still friends with them.
Of course, a few issues get more complicated. Abortion being the big one. If you absolutely believe that any abortion in any form is murder, and I can't say you're wrong to feel that way if you do, then yeah, it's going to be hard to compromise. The compromise between "murder is okay" and "murder is not okay" isn't so simple as "some murder is okay".
Ah, hell, I'm rambling at this point. The older I get, the more I watch the world grow more partisan, the more friendships and familial relationships I see strained or torn apart over the subject in the last few years, the more I'm coming to agree with the people who dismiss it all with a cry of "politics suck!". And in my younger days, I was intensely political. I couldn't get enough of it. Listened to it all the time, read books on it, had my own political blog, tried to help with local elections... That's a lot of my life I probably could have spent more wisely.