<human>: Give me the gist of the text in a nutshell

Jumping right in,  I have a friend from high school who I truly don't know how to "treat" right now. He's someone you would probably describe as bitter or jaded, but in a bit of a strange way.

When you first meet him, he doesn't immediately strike you as strange or odd but having even a short conversation with him you would probably see cracks to show. He can be quite racist and prejudiced at times, believes that the government is conspiring against us all, and seems to have worrying tendencies of violence (he has the uncanny habit to bring up topics of seemingly normal people "snapping" and going on shooting rampages).

In addition he is very stubborn in his beliefs, and actively tries to get everyone to agree with him (when he found out our one friend was smoking pot, he spent several hours harassing and arguing with him to stop, and then completely cut communications with him afterwards).

Now if you're wondering why I'm friends with this guy in the first place, its that for a few years I was in a pretty bad spot, and felt similarity jaded against the "world" in general. I have since moved away, and after starting fresh again I found I was able to have a much more positive outlook on life overall. I did end up coming back though, and I found that he has not changed in the slightest.

I don't exactly know how to "deal" with this guy now though. Simply put, hanging out with him is simply a chore and I feel I shouldn't waste time catering to people when I could be enjoying more mutually beneficial friendships. I know I'm eventually going have to confront him on this and simply tell him how I feel, but the long time I've known this guy and my fear of sending him off the deep end after this (I don't think he has many close friends aside from me) really holds me back.

The point of this post really is just to look for any advice of what to do in this situation, because I really don't feel I know how to handle this.
<bot>: I feel brought down by an old friend who is bigoted and possibly a bit unstable. Looking for any advice in dealing with the situation