There are so many good at-home alone entertainment options now (this website counts as one) that the scarce couple hours per week you can tear someone away from them to hang out with you is less consequential to their political development than whatever feed they spend 20 hours per week scrolling. That was the unfortunate conclusion I arrived at after spending many frustrating hours talking to a longtime friend about trans issues and then they just kept sliding further down the right wing rabbit hole. I’m guilty of the same probably, from the perspective of some liberals I know. I do not value their political opinions as much as ones I read online here and elsewhere. One person stopped talking to me, not immediately after but probably ultimately caused by a discussion we had on Ukraine where I said they should make territorial concessions for peace because the war is nightmarishly awful and needs to end. In retrospect it was stupid to engage in that discussion and I valued their human company more than hashing out opinions on a war neither of us had any say about. But so it goes.
By the way the flip side of this is that a lot of people who share your political views are annoying as fuck or have various other traits that make them not good friends. I would not go so far as to say shared political beliefs are orthogonal to being a good friend but there are so, so many things that go into the cocktail of making someone pleasant to be around that I do often wonder whether I drastically overrate the importance of politics in friendships.
