That they were what? Racist? Clearly opportunistic? Warmongers?
I've known that's what they were my entire adult life. It still matters that the most extreme parts of the party were seen as something they had to keep in check.
A lot of people are ill informed on global politics. Bush and McCain voters were not radicalized on average in the same way they are now. That's not just voters taking their mask off there has been a real and measurable moral decay in conservative voters.
The Donald Trump movement has, in part, put a spotlight on things that were always there (mask off, as you say.)
It also has created new monsters all its own, which is giving those long standing hidden prejudices greater strength than they've ever known.
Bush's grandfather sided with the Nazi's. Bush sr and Reagan conspired with terrorists against Carter and later just in general. Bush's brother helped rig the election against Gore. Jr. went to war with the enemies of the people that did 9/11.
These are just the top few things off the top of my head, that's not even getting into McCarthyism and the faux red scare, civil rights movements, Nixon and the Business Plot, and way more to ever be able to list in a reddit post.
Just because they started using the words they mean instead of hiding, doesn't mean they weren't always like this.
And again, I repoint you to my discussion of voters having moved.
Ideologies are complex and constantly shifting.
You do not need to twist my arm to convince me Republicans are some mixture of stupid or evil and have been for decades. I am in complete agreement. That doesn't justify your original statement.
The ideology of mainstream conservatism in the United States has changed especially as it has expanded its hateful rhetoric to include more and more Americans that used to be accepted as part of the hedgemonic in group.
Polarization in the United States skyrocketed after Obama's election, and the propaganda machine has worked overtime crafting the new reality that lead to Trump's election. That reality has only continued to morph in the decade Trump has spent at the head of the Republican party.
Contrast with the 90's when there was relatively (relatively is doing a lot of work here, I confess) low polarization and an increasingly shared neo-liberal consensus among Americans. A lot of aspects of that consensus were built on falsehoods (hateful falsehoods, even) but the consensus was stronger.
My career is historical education, and while "they just took their masks off" is pithy, it undersells the danger that is posed by how successful the nihilistic radicalism that has taken over of American political discourse has become.
Yes, we can draw a straight line back to Reagan and see how many of the Reagan era politics got us here - but we still weren't here. We were somewhere different, with a different set of problems and a different set of ideologies dominating popular discussion.
People are more than capable of double think. It's not "now using the words they really mean" for many people. It's that they used to earnestly support racist policy while believing themselves to be anti-racist. Many of these people have now shifted to supporting racist policy and being fine with that. That is a very dangerous shift, because it is a more radical view - and that means they will support more and more depraved policies - ones they wouldn't have supported when protecting the cognitive dissonance mattered to them.
Saying "this is just who they always were" ignores the people who are far less tolerant today than then they were 30 years ago. It ignores how there are no longer any sources of consensus in American politics.
There were racists then and racists now. The how, what, and why of people's racism isn't exactly the same though. It is, as always, shifting and changing in ways that are difficult to track.
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u/iaxthepaladin 2d ago
It's fringe to the part of our psyche still living in 1999.