friends and politics

i wish i could put this in the life category cuz it's where it belongs. before i continue on, i need to clarify my position. i am a right leaning centrist who airs on the side of liberty. in fact last time i took the compass test i was 6 points towards liberty and at the beginning of 2020 i was 8 points towards liberty (it went up drastically to 2 points mid 2020 and i don't see how anyone can blame me based on how violent things got last year). that out of the way, early last year was the last time i saw the person this post is about in person and i did consider him my best friend (how f*cking naive i was). after a political argument with him on facebook i asked him to hangout and he agreed. he then flaked on me and didn't give a reason but we rescheduled. 2nd time he flaked on me stating his dad died. now thats understandable. i showed my support and then waited a few months before scheduling again. when i asked him again he agreed but not without arguing politics yet again and wouldn't you know it he flaked on me this time as well. he stated he needed to stay there with his cat who had just gotten out of the vet. let me explain the cat here. he lives with his mother and it's not that hard to find someone to watch your animal for you when you know you've made plans to hang out. this was the last straw. i called him out for the poor excuses and didn't try to hang out since then. i didn't want to waste my time if he was serious he could contact me. well i heard from him again and guess what it's to argue f*ing politics again. he came onto my facebook wall not to react to a meme, not to show support for any of my work, not to have a good laugh with me, but to argue politics. specifically he wanted me to stop sharing content from right leaning political commentators. he doesn't have a problem with the left wing commentators just the right wing ones. i believe all opinions need to be heard. this was a huge insult not only will he not hang out but when he comes onto my page it's just to argue and tell me what i can and can't do. i asked him multiple times throughout to stop talking politics cuz he wasn't arguing in good faith. he continued to argue so i unfriended him then resent a friend request and told him thats a warning. he continued arguing so i unfriended him with no intention of adding him back this time. it's at this point where i knew he was a fake friend and yet we where best friends for years. now what you need to understand is the post was public so he could continue replying and thats exzactly what he did. he continued to argue with me so this time i warned him if he didn't drop it i would block him. he then proceeded to message me saying if he ever saw me share content from a specific commentator again he would punch me until i had "some sense knocked into me" and he called me a n@zi. now if you recall my political lean is very opposite of n@zis so that was it, i blocked him. this is whats wrong with politics in america. when did people become so radical that we can't even have a difference in opinion? it's not just the left wing i've seen this stuff from the right wing too. in fact a friend from the right who misunderstands what libertarianism is told me when i told him i'm a libertarian "liberals get the bull3t too" it took months to deradicalize this guy. the last time he took his compass test he was 2 points authoritarian a huge difference from where i could only imagine he was at when he told me that. and let me be clear i'm not saying don't talk politics. but we need to be respectful to eachother if someone says it's time to stop especially if they say the friendship is on the line if you don't it's probably time to stop. there needs to be an open dialogue and an honest one which means politics in small doses. for a TL;DR i miss when we all could just get along together and talk about ideas and disagree peacefully. just cuz i disagree with you doesn't mean i'm radicalized. it means i disagree with you. and maybe some small civil conversations will change my mind on a subject you never know. but you also got to be willing to listen to my opinions as well cuz maybe you're wrong about something. the point about talking politics is not to just change 1 person it's to change everyone involved in the conversation or rather have both people come away with something. it's to find the truth that lays between the right and left. that doesn't happen when you turn off and talk past someone and tell them what to do. thats how echo chambers are made and when theres an echo chamber you better believe bad ideas get spread around.