This has been a concern of mine for awhile now, and it’s finally happening. My only close friends are people I have grown up my whole life with. We’re all suburbanite cishet crackermen who were well-off enough to never have to struggle with potentially starving or becoming homeless; predictably, this has fostered some garbage politics, mainly trumpanzees and blue MAGA. With Cheeto Hitler removing whatever shreds of a mask of humanity the Great Satan had left, I now have my blue MAGA friends calling out my trumpanzee friends for their support of Drumpf. The trumpanzees have been silent since the inauguration, and today the group chat has been split.
It was already a terrible form of liberalism for me to have let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship with people who, if I wasn’t already close to, would throw in the cuck pit. There is still a major issue in that the most vocal of the friends I’m still in touch with are blue MAGA to the point that, if I’m to grow a spine and actually stop letting things slide, I’m worried that I’ll be smeared as fascist myself and lose the close friends I have because pushing back against great man theory takes that make Orange Satan out to be a uniquely evil force instead of recognizing the evil of the system that produced him will invariably come across as defending Trump. I’m bad at making myself go outside, let alone making friends, that I’ll have very few IRL people in my actual life.
Edit: The issue seems to have been deeper than politics, and the sides reconciled. However, the baseline seems to be “no outright evil political beliefs”, and Marxism Leninism is considered evil by most burgers.
My social situation is almost eerily similar to OP’s, with a critical difference being that with one or two exceptions, my friends are either apolitical or center-right. Because we were friends since childhood, we have a whole range of shared interests and hobbies that have nothing to do with politics. Whenever there was political hostility between us, it was usually instigated by a couple shit-stirrers on the periphery of our friend group.
After a big row regarding Columbus Day / Indigenous Peoples Day a few years ago, the bulk of the friend group decided “no political discussion” and when it comes up by the shit-stirrers, just ignore it.
And honestly, this “no politics” rule has worked out pretty well. Admittedly this is easier to do when you have a majority who are apolitical or aren’t really all that interested in discussing politics. Long way of saying, I really like your suggestions to OP, certainly better and healthier than the suggestions about “burn it all down and leave”.