I mean if you wanna dive that deep, it started when some religious extremists got kicked out of England for being too extremist (for the british empire!) and moved to the new world, killing the people who previously lived there.
… But up until 2008 shit more or less held together? Not pretending 'murica was ever good, but it was the 2008 recession that caused its structure, however fucky it had been from first principles, to really break down.
The modern far-right really got it’s first big taste of legitimacy with the Tea Party. Which, yes, would be 2009-ish, and a blood-relative to the election of Obama. (E.g., without Obama as president, the racist fears of the Tea Party would have fizzled out in the harsh light of reality.) But I look at all of this on a continuum; the only two conservatives I see in recent memory that have made an apparently sincere attempt to stop the crazy train have been John McCain (…although he took Palin as a running mate…) and Mitt Romney, and they both got crushed by Dems. Well, maybe Liz Cheney too. Maybe. But she was okay with everything except Trump, so I dunno. Anyway, point is - Nixon, Reagan, and Gingritch were all laying the foundations and drawing up the architectural plans that Trump has used, and is using now, to build his version of a fascist state.
I mean if you wanna dive that deep, it started when some religious extremists got kicked out of England for being too extremist (for the british empire!) and moved to the new world, killing the people who previously lived there.
… But up until 2008 shit more or less held together? Not pretending 'murica was ever good, but it was the 2008 recession that caused its structure, however fucky it had been from first principles, to really break down.
The modern far-right really got it’s first big taste of legitimacy with the Tea Party. Which, yes, would be 2009-ish, and a blood-relative to the election of Obama. (E.g., without Obama as president, the racist fears of the Tea Party would have fizzled out in the harsh light of reality.) But I look at all of this on a continuum; the only two conservatives I see in recent memory that have made an apparently sincere attempt to stop the crazy train have been John McCain (…although he took Palin as a running mate…) and Mitt Romney, and they both got crushed by Dems. Well, maybe Liz Cheney too. Maybe. But she was okay with everything except Trump, so I dunno. Anyway, point is - Nixon, Reagan, and Gingritch were all laying the foundations and drawing up the architectural plans that Trump has used, and is using now, to build his version of a fascist state.