When the history books are written about his dark time in America and how we arrived at a con man reality show charlatan and his kleptocratic klan in the White House as the fronts for the new Fascist Order in America, these will be some of the points on the chart:
(1) Nixon's southern strategy and the welcoming of Dixiecrats into the corporatist Republican fold.
(2) The Dixiecrats paving the way for the rabidly right-wing white evangelical theocrats since those two groups practically overlap - the latter being the progeny of the former
(3) The oligarchical Koch Brothers and the Koch father playing the very long game ever since the latter helped lead the John Birch Society
(4) The assertion of civil rights against these forces which, though many battles were won against them, also heightened the bigotries that never lay buried too far beneath the surface
(5) Ronald Reagan.
(6) The NRA
(7) The 2000 Supreme Court decision of Bush v Gore which was a judicial coup - an acknowledged one even in the ruling itself since it stated that the legal concept of stare decisis (one of the very foundations of our legal system) did not apply in this case.
(8) Fox News and all its many media tentacles.
(9) 9/11 and the subsequent national security state including a militarized police force
(10) A black man and his blacker wife and children living in the White House as our president and first lady and their daughters.
(11) White men and women seeing other white men and women succeed as they fell farther behind and instead of holding those other white people to account were conned by those other white people to place the blame on "the other" in any form that ginned up the anger and heightened the differences and unburied the bigotries.
(12) The Kardashians, Real Housewives, et al.
(13) So few people vote.
(14) Cable news and its growing resemblance to #12
(15) So few people read.
(17) The need to be conned. Never underestimate that need in people.
(18) Putin
(19) Yet another iteration of a politicized FBI
(20) Ignorance.
(21) The need to be ignorant.
(22) The solace of ignorance.
I am glad to find art that speaks up !
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