So it doesn't sound like you changed your opinions much, just decided that you agreed more with the conservatives you talked to more than the liberals you talked to, and like Tucker Carlson more than Trevor Noah.

every time I try to have a rational discussion, liberals almost immediately go to an extreme and call me a racist/sexist moron.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you aren't a racist/sexist moron, but the remaining options are (1) you are talking to an idiot, you picked the wrong liberal to talk to, or (2) you have such fundamentally different assumptions that rationality doesn't matter.

In response to (1) - if the first person to engage is an idiot, don't judge everyone else as an idiot too. Try not talking politics on platforms that encourage idiocy. Also, if you aren't talking to a troll, 99 times out of a hundred the conversation belongs in category (2).

About (2) - We can rationally talk about euclidean geometry if we agree to start by assuming that straight lines are straight and flat planes are flat. But if we don't agree on assumptions and try to have a rational argument anyway, we will end up calling each other morons and idiots because one of us might be brilliantly explaining Euclid's proofs while the other proves them all nonsense with the assumptions of hyperbolic geometry.

Politics isn't about rational discussion. It is about assumptions. Assumptions about who is important, and when, and why. Assumptions about who yields when there are conflicting rights.