General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: A question for older DUers and those who study history: Were repubicans always this nuts? [View all]hifiguy
(33,688 posts)has brainwashed a lot of people into zombiehood in the last twenty years here in MN and all across the country. People with kook beliefs used to keep quiet about them. Now that they have been encouraged and enabled by that machine they shout their kookery at the tops of their lungs from every rooftop.
The difference is that the old-time cranky conservatives - who really were conservatives then and not dangerous right wing radicals - just grumped and complained in the fashion of Abe Simpson. There was no particular religious component to it. When African Americans and women, and later gays and lesbians, began demanding to be treated as actual citizens the religulous nuts seized on that to drum up paranoia and existential fear. Given that fundamentalist religion in this country has always attracted the most ignorant segment of the population, its rise emboldened the finger-sniffers, fart-eaters and pig-ignorant. Add hate radio, the Bircher plutocrats and there you have the modern Repig party.