You're an Oberlin graduate. I'm sure you saw a wide variety of leftists there, ranging from people who wanted to be “openminded” to people who were hard-left Marxists and worse. I can't think of many places better to study the nuttiness of liberalism than the bowels of that beast...
In the early 1960s, I was invited to speak at Antioch, by a seven member YAF Chapter--the dissenters on a small campus of 850 or so with many hard Left types--some the children of known New York Communists. Being familiar with Leftwing thought patterns from my Oberlin experience, I applied the lesson from the fable of the Six Blind Hindus & the elephant, and said what I would have said to a Conservative Ohio audience, but in a reverse & somewhat scrambled order, with the result that you could hear a pin drop, as the c. 100 or so in attendance, had no clear idea where I was coming from for the hour & a quarter that I spoke.
A few weeks later, J.J. Kilpatrick, then still with the Richmond News Leader, with whom I had an extensive correspondence during the late 1950s & early 1960s, spoke there under the same auspices. But his only comment to me afterward, was how slovenly & dirty the students in attendance appeared. My experience with Oberlin Leftists had made me much less focused on that facet; but in Virginia, in that era, College students still dressed like young ladies & gentlemen.
(But do not get the wrong idea. While the Oberlin Leftist activist types were sometimes slovenly, the typical student was nothing like the Antioch Leftists in appearance. Among our plethora of Ohio colleges, Antioch was truly in a class by itself.)
William Flax