First of all, the government bashing, and especially claiming (*) to want less government, has nothing to do with being a sceptic or not. It's a pretty USA-specific right-wing trope. And given that it's more associated with bible-thumpers and some freeman-on-the-land/prepper/whatever wooists than anyone else, I'm curious what confusion of mind leads you to think it's a sceptic trait or trope.
(*) And I say "claim", because a lot of the same people who claim to want less government, are ok with high miltary spending (which, surprise, is government too), or with using taxpayer money to enforce who can marry whom, or to police abortions, or to crack on drugs, or with increasing border guards or even building a great wall, or making sure what genitals go with what gender. (Presumably having to show them to some toilet guard too, to make sure nobody the wrong biological sex goes into the wrong toilet booth, where nobody else would see it anyway.)
At any rate, it seems to me like it's orthogonal to being a sceptic or not. You can arrive to it just as well, if not better, by believing some conspiracy theory or other woo, as via some kind of convoluted sceptic-like rationale.
Second, deconverting too is rather orthogonal to being a sceptic or not.
For a start, a lot of people deconvert from, say, Xianity only to join an even more woo cult. Like, start wearing a pentagram and droning about how Wicca is an ancient religion, never mind that it's less than a century "ancient". Or join the Kemet Orthodoxy (Kemet=ancient Egyptian name of Egypt), presumably so named because it bears no resemblance whatsoever with what we know from all those scrolls and inscriptions about what the ancient Egyptians actually believed. Or some pseudo-Eastern guru.
Also, you can deconvert from Xianity and jolly well keep other pre-existing woo. Just stopping believing in one woo, doesn't mean one suddenly drops all of them. E.g., I know one guy who's totally not into religion any more, but still believes that the world is run by some cabal of people so rich, that they're not even on the Top X lists of the richest people. Apparently they slid right off the list UPWARDS. Or a couple of otherwise fine gals who totally aren't into religion any more, but still believe in clairvoyance and whatnot.
Third, and actually the root of the above, virtually EVERYONE is a sceptic to some extent. If I told even the most woowoo-ridden nutter that by decree of the galactic Emperor they should pay their taxes to me, they'd ask for evidence. They suspend that scepticism for a couple of things they really WANT to believe (such as that Jesus is their kid's personal crossing guard) or to disbelieve (e.g., that their doctor really means it when he says stop smoking), but will jolly well ask for evidence for almost anything else.
Becoming a full time sceptic, so to speak, is nothing more than trying to avoid your own blind spots. Usually via applying a more rigorous logical framework, but it's not the only way.
Fourth, and actually I think the root of the confusion that spawns threads like this, is that most people don't really understand what scepticism is when others do it. They expect it to play out like the Sceptic archetype in novels and movies, which is really just a narrative trope. If you need to explain something, you don't explain it to the audience, you explain it to a character. And if it's hard to swallow or needs a lot more explaining, you use the Sceptic, which is a sockpuppet that raises some weak-sauce objections, but is immediately convinced when the hero explains it. Or will be proven wrong in the end.
So some people seem to expect that "sceptic" IRL means the same thing: someone who just asks some questions, and then is totally convinced by their hare-brained woowoo when they explain it.
And when sceptics are, surprise, sceptical and don't swallow the BS, or worse yet, call fallacies, here come the threads complaining about what's wrong with sceptics. Or why the guy who just called BS isn't a REAL sceptic, but some pseudo or rookie sceptic.
It's a coping mechanism, really
