(Not American and don't live in either place you describe.)
Is that feeling of pushback to an (assumed) different viewpoint just that in the midwest, a conservative is in the majority, and in SF they're not? So, in one place you'd encounter almost no confident opposition, and in the other you would? I assume it might stand out and feel like suppression if you weren't at all used to it.
I suspect that's part of it for sure. A lot of what conservatives have been getting upset about over the last few decades is diffusion of power away from well-off, white, straight men to everybody else. Loss of power still feels like a personal loss, even if systemically it's a move toward a more equal structure.
Is that feeling of pushback to an (assumed) different viewpoint just that in the midwest, a conservative is in the majority, and in SF they're not? So, in one place you'd encounter almost no confident opposition, and in the other you would? I assume it might stand out and feel like suppression if you weren't at all used to it.