I had a group of friends that I spent most my sophomore year with at a very liberal east-coast college. Most of the friends in the group studied international relations and we frequently discussed politics. As I got to know them, I realized that we differed on a lot of things. Two of them told me that they wanted to join the CIA as analysts. Now I'm not a poli-sci major, but I know enough about history to know that the CIA has done and continues to do some evil shit. Now I do have a bunch of moderate leaning friends, but it felt different talking with this group of friends they had good understand of history and political philosophy. One of these guys, let’s call him Matt, was a huge Aaron Sorkin fan and Blairite (weirdly obsessed with British politics for some reason). Matt also wanted to work in political finance. I thought we were bonding over are mutual interest in the space related stuff until he showed me a Aaron Sorkin mini-series on the Apollo Space Program. And then proceed to tell me that he like the Apollo Missions because of all the political wonkery involved. The tipping point in our friendship was when he told me, at a BLM protest, that he was happy to finally get his "liberal street cred". Liberal wonks are some of the worst people to be friends with if you genuine care about making life better for people.
My girlfriend at the time was a huge Joe Biden supporter, her mom worked at the World Bank. She would often jokingly say that I was a communist and would side with the group of friends on domestic and foreign policy issues. She started fighting with me when I explained to her that the public health think-tank that she was applying to was just a health care lobbying group. This hurt me because I was really in love with her at the time, but I could see that she wasn’t open to critically challenge the world around her. She also got upset that I owned a gun, as many people from the south do. And when I decided to switch my studies from finance to computers science, she wasn’t supportive. Anyway, I broke up with her later and stopped talking with group of friends.
Anyway, I really wish I could meet some cool people with socialist outlook that are down to crack a cold one and do some grilling.
I can't say its the only reason really but it was a reason. I had been dating this Cuban girl for 2 years, when we first started dating she and I were both libs. But as time went on I radicalized more, many thanks to one Bernard Sanders, she didn't like his rhetoric. She fully believed he would bring forth the death of her family (or something idk its been 3 years now). Which is literally insane but the crazier thing is we reconnected earlier in this year and she brought up how she had a medical emergency not too long prior and wished the US had something akin to what Cuba has since her grandparents (who are still back in Cuban) dont struggle with having to pay for medicine. Which needless to say I felt gaslit, we didnt talk much after and within another month we went back to being strangers. So yeah that was wild for me.
Edit: I only have one leftist friend I know irl. She's pretty wild and is the only one I don't mind just talking politically freely with. I also have an old friend who's a chud, and I low key believe he'd merc my ass if this country fell apart, but with me he's always been a pretty good dude. Someone I could rely on if I needed something (and I have he once gave me a spare tirewhen I was younger drove like 20+miles out of his way), just definitely could never admit I was to the left of a Democrat