It could be "I was working with dangerously incompetent buffoons, and they got upset when I demonstrated that their projects where bug-ridden / physically impossible".
Or the OP is nuts.
Or it's somewhere in between, the OP had reasonable points but the managers struggled to understand them (or the OP had trouble getting them across). In this case, there's a fair bit of management / communications incompetence on both sides.
I'd agree in most situations, however, given that it's not uncommon for many at Amazon to move to Google, Microsoft, et al. we can make a general assumption that the average engineer isn't a "dangerously incompetent buffoon" (outliers can occur, but a whole team of such is very unlikely).
Also, OP is probably not nuts, more likely a narcissist as other have commented. Of course there's many posts out there stating that management is not functioning as it should - OP paints the same picture, however, the statement provided by the author also tells of continuously combative attitude.
The author clearly acknowledges that they're not only ignoring politics, but actively "alienating" themselves from their peers to achieve the best performance they can.
>> "So why was I not promoted? There are fair criticisms of my personality that I'm willing to accept as legitimate, but my performance was real and measurable."
Despite these characteristics the author still expects and insists that they deserve a promotion because of the 'merit'.
Hence the TLDR.