I agree with most of that. Most republicans are decent people, but he has coalesced the people that aren't.
They are disaffected for any number of reasons and The Orange Menace has made it okay for them to express their anger with racism and bigotry. Tea Party on steroids. In the past, there were always the Birchers, etc. but they never had the ability to communicate with each other very easily at the level and intensity of the internet.
They are emboldened by the reinforcement they get, and suddenly, being pissed off is a cottage industry. People like our trolls on the IHUB boards are suddenly empowered by the internet but don't have the skills to compete in an environment with any intellectual bent... it is sort of like giving all 12 years olds loaded firearms but giving them no instruction.
I don't think it is a coincidence that they despise education and want to cut it at all levels. Education was probably painful for them and there is a sense of unity among them when they have a chance to exact some measure of revenge on the education system.
If the trickle-down economy was a major contributor to their troubles, they fail to recognize it, and prefer attacking whoever is held up as the villain. Their heros, the pull-yourself-up-by-the-boostraps types, are actually speaking about them, but they fail to be self-aware enough to know that they are the ones that need to take that class, take that risk, compete for that different job instead of feeling that the world owes them something and that the latest fascist will deliver it.
I think the true deplorables will never fit into modern society and never have. The scumbag cohort now has one of their own to get behind and the republicans didn't lift a finger to restore sanity. So they will get what they deserve, and certainly not sympathy from me because they are unable to adapt to a changing world. Isn't that sort of a loose definition of a conservative?
AI
