You can just be sitting there and they bring up a hot topic. You can say, "Well the data/research/stats/the internet you told me to look up" and they still call you a liar.
They're not interested in the convo. So why bother?
I've noticed many of them just want to re-enact whatever they just saw/heard/read on Faux/hate radio/Nazi-adjacent websites and want a captive audience, ideally.
My father in law was terrible about trying to crowbar politics into every discussion. Everyone could be talking about baking cookies and he'd start whining about how trump is being persecuted (this was before he was being prosecuted) and how it's illegal to be christian (his house is crawling distance from two churches) amd whatever else fox news told him to think. He finally burned his last bridge and told my wife (his daughter, of course) that he didn't want to see her again. Her "Oh thank god, bye" reaction isn't what he expected.
I feel like I know him without ever having met him.
Guessing he uses "the liberals" as a hand-wavey catch all for anyone and everyone that's ever done anything he's ever disagreed with or sees as wrong in the country?
Also assumes that there's a "war on" anything he likes, orchestrated by the aforementioned liberals?
Doesn't actively take part in local politics but sees himself as some sort of ideological warrior, keeping the faith and "fighting the good fight" day in and day out?
Hasn't been in a city with a six figure population in 25 years except (maybe) for concerts and sporting events, yet seems to think he knows, in detail, how horrible they are?
Thinks driving a manual transmission vehicle is a personality trait?
Regularly rails against "cancel culture"...but proudly brags about how he hasn't set foot in a Dick's sporting goods since they quit selling guns, and hasn't drank a bud light since that whole fiasco...but that's not canceling, that's different?
Hey, my wife and I both drive a manual. But that's not our personality, we just kept getting burned by automatics when buying crappy used cars.
The rest of it does sound very familiar, to this red-state resident. It's wild how empty some people are, and how desperate they are to fill their heads with something.