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Trump 1 started it, and Trump 2 finished the job: the PMC wine mom class has become about 2/3 as radicalized as the average right con voter, finally reaching striking distance of rhetorical parity.
Eg, they talk like they want unlimited jihad on the rednecks, death to all MAGots, let 10000 red camellias gracefully drop from the stem, etc. , all the shit I've been hearing from every Con that listened to too much O'Reilly and Limbaugh for the past couple decades.
I don't think people really understand how much bile civility politics was holding back; how much the Obama "They go low we go high" neolib loser meme had a choke hold on the normie dems. Them shaking of the illusion that the Right side of the Cons were playing the same game can only help them, given you can still get elected twice while being as crass and declase as Trump if you style on them enough from the podium.
They still have their fancy talking schmoozers who don't believe in anything, maybe they can get some people throwing bombs into the crowd who also don't believe in anything.
Yeah, no, you don't get to rewrite history like this. I grew up surrounded by O'Reilly and Rush fans before moving to Blue America. Cons say libs are "dumb," "fruity," or "clueless." Libs say cons are "hateful," "evil," a "disease." Libs don't get to excuse their bloodthirst by inventing an alternate past where the cons escalated the rhetoric first.
Beg to differ (coming in late because of reports) but my experience is closer to @asdasdasdasd's. I was around Rush and O'Reilly listeners in an even earlier era (Clinton). I definitely heard a lot of "Democrats hate America, liberals are a cancer, and you should cut off any family members who voted for Clinton." The rage was palpable, especially when he was reelected.
Ann Coulter was a big name at the time, and you may or may not remember this gem from 2002:
Now, Ann Coulter was and is a massive troll and I believe a lot of her act was performative grifting, but these were not isolated sentiments.
Of course I also saw the palpable rage from liberals when Bush was elected, and then reelected. But your version that conservatives just regarded liberals with a sort of benign contempt but no real animosity, and it was liberals who first got ugly and "bloodthirsty" about it, does not match my recollection.
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I'm sorry for the late response; but:
My first introduction to vulgar conservatism was setting in a work truck listing to christian radio with my boss and getting ocasional asides about how "Obama is a traitor to the country who should be shot" and also how that same logic applied to all other democrats, who were trying to kill every christian in the country by letting the terrorists win, etc etc etc.
It may not have been that bad where you were, but it was that bad where I was, and also in most other places. Why do you think the prolls chose Trump, a generational hater, over bush, a replacement level neocon?
It wasn't for the policy, it was for the venom.
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