The reordering event was Barack Obama's election to office, which is where Birtherism came from, and Birtherism is where Trump's political rise came from.
More important than understanding the triggering event is understanding how the camel's back had gotten so weak over the decades that a straw could snap its spine. We've had runaway we…
The reordering event was Barack Obama's election to office, which is where Birtherism came from, and Birtherism is where Trump's political rise came from.
More important than understanding the triggering event is understanding how the camel's back had gotten so weak over the decades that a straw could snap its spine. We've had runaway wealth inequality since the 1970's and racial/sexual awakening backlashes since the 1960's. A black liberal lawyer from an immigrant father making it into the presidency was the culmination of everything the left fought *for* since the 1960's, and everything the right fought *against* since the 1960's. For a whole lot of working class conservatives, the election of Barack Obama was to them a byproduct of immigrants and minorities getting to higher places in the increasingly-rigged meritocracy via policies like affirmative action and immigrant welfare, while the working class and middle class families who had been in this country longer than Obama's family had were struggling like a mother fucker in the wake of the '08 financial crisis. There was also the specter of islamophobia in the air after 9/11, and Barrack *Hussein* Obama sounded just a littttttle too close in name to the very people conservatives were freaking out the most about in the 00's (Muslims and gay people were the conservative minority targets of the 2000's, minorities and gay people were the conservative minority targets of the 90's).
When a whole party's politics is based on wanting to keep minorities down economically, vocationally, and culturally for the better part of 30+ years then it's not a big fuckin surprise that the nation's first black *liberal* president would generate a giant anti-minority backlash that would consume the corners of conservative politics for the next decade. Welp, here we are.
The reordering event was Barack Obama's election to office, which is where Birtherism came from, and Birtherism is where Trump's political rise came from.
More important than understanding the triggering event is understanding how the camel's back had gotten so weak over the decades that a straw could snap its spine. We've had runaway wealth inequality since the 1970's and racial/sexual awakening backlashes since the 1960's. A black liberal lawyer from an immigrant father making it into the presidency was the culmination of everything the left fought *for* since the 1960's, and everything the right fought *against* since the 1960's. For a whole lot of working class conservatives, the election of Barack Obama was to them a byproduct of immigrants and minorities getting to higher places in the increasingly-rigged meritocracy via policies like affirmative action and immigrant welfare, while the working class and middle class families who had been in this country longer than Obama's family had were struggling like a mother fucker in the wake of the '08 financial crisis. There was also the specter of islamophobia in the air after 9/11, and Barrack *Hussein* Obama sounded just a littttttle too close in name to the very people conservatives were freaking out the most about in the 00's (Muslims and gay people were the conservative minority targets of the 2000's, minorities and gay people were the conservative minority targets of the 90's).
When a whole party's politics is based on wanting to keep minorities down economically, vocationally, and culturally for the better part of 30+ years then it's not a big fuckin surprise that the nation's first black *liberal* president would generate a giant anti-minority backlash that would consume the corners of conservative politics for the next decade. Welp, here we are.