Wow, you see absolutes everywhere. Exposed once, spiritual death. World of friends, world of wars--pick one. It's all more complex than that.
Some relationships are easy because nobody is trying to sabotage them, others are hard because somebody is, others are hard for entirely different reasons. It's the middle case that I'm concerned with here. I agree that it's a pretty awful thing to harm a friendship by injecting it with unnecessary culture war bullshit but my claim is that in most cases it's neither of the friends who want that outcome, it's some remote third party who has decided to interfere. Sure it's a failing of one friend or the other if they take the bait, but they have not spiritually killed the other by doing so.
Some relationships are easy because nobody is trying to sabotage them, others are hard because somebody is, others are hard for entirely different reasons. It's the middle case that I'm concerned with here. I agree that it's a pretty awful thing to harm a friendship by injecting it with unnecessary culture war bullshit but my claim is that in most cases it's neither of the friends who want that outcome, it's some remote third party who has decided to interfere. Sure it's a failing of one friend or the other if they take the bait, but they have not spiritually killed the other by doing so.