I'm just trying to sort how all of this happens so blatantly at once.

To be completely clear I live in a deeply progressive part of the country and am surrounded by every stereotype of the bottom left quadrant. I know there's a cliche of 'doing the reading' but I've never felt pressured by my education. I'm a college dropout and I kind of low key refuse to read theory out of a mild obstinance but that hasn't been a barrier, def. Unsusre where to go to find those people.

My parents went to college in varying degrees and they were/are neoliberal conervatives. My Dad confessed some sex crimes to me from when 'it was different in those days' so yeah good riddance to him for that and a few other things but my Mom is a deeply toxic person, so I do gravitate towards the no contact crowd to commisserate. Genuinely though I do think that politics do reflect a personality to a certain degree so I'm not sure what to say there. Everyone from my parent's generation were all about 'never talking politics' and I think it's an admission that you probably would hunt the homeless for sport if it was legal and you don't know how to not get baited in a conversation into admitting it. Keep in mind everyone from that generation voted for Reagan and that's a huge ding any day.

I do think you're abbreviating details here probably for good reason, but if the only people you meet are like this it's time for a new bar. Or you're maybe very young in a relative sense as it takes some time to temper the edges of this kind of purity politics. That and I think guilt by association is valid only if you are trying to be deeply guarded about something and that kind of defensiveness does get overblown in circles built on performativity.

Best example of an extreme I'd personally encountered and had to deal with for friend circle issues is a guy we hung out with for a while who was socially awkward, for sure, but I wanted to try giving him the benefit of a doubt. Dude even admitted to being a transphobe but 'was just asking questions' so I thought maybe there was a path to tolerance and change there. Sure enough though after a couple months all he did was creep out the women in the group and be really insistent that everyone should start playing Smash Bros at every hangout(an unfortunate red flag admittedly), and when I asked him how he thought he was coming off he went off the rails and started talking about how everyone had impossible standards and our trans friends were delusional, so later dude.

I say all of this to at least try to put the defensiveness you might run into in a sympathetic light. I imagine these people have run into some real creepos and if they get any sniff of it they shut down.