Politics & Power Quote by Bruce Davison

Tolerance here isn’t framed as a lofty virtue; it’s pitched as a muscle that atrophies without reminders. Bruce Davison, speaking as an actor rather than a policy thinker, lands the point in everyday language: people don’t wake up and choose intolerance as an ideology so much as slide into it through habit, fear, and social permission. “Needs to be reminded” is the tell. It implies forgetfulness, not ignorance - a subtle rebuke to the idea that polarization is just a battle of principles. It’s also an admission that moral clarity is rarely permanent; it requires maintenance.

The self-correction is doing real work. He starts with “reactionary political world,” then narrows it to “climate,” which is more precise and more damning. A “world” suggests a totalizing reality; “climate” suggests conditions you’re breathing in, something ambient that shapes behavior even if you don’t consciously endorse it. That shift also reads like a performer’s instinct for the right word - less grand, more accurate. It’s a quiet reminder that language sets the emotional temperature.

Contextually, “reactionary” flags backlash politics: the turn toward grievance, hard borders (literal and cultural), and a nostalgia that treats inclusion as loss. Davison’s intent isn’t to pick a team; it’s to name the mood and its consequences. In that mood, tolerance becomes unfashionable, recast as weakness or naivete. His line tries to rescue it as a civic baseline - not an abstract ideal, but the minimum required to keep a plural society from curdling into permanent suspicion.