Yeah, the sentiments were always there, but not to such a degree, nor so openly. There were plenty of extreme reactionaries in the Republican party, but they knew they had to use dog whistles or be relegated to its fringe with the outright fascists; you couldn’t really paint the entire party with that brush. Mostly who were sufficiently extreme in their right-wing views, rather than be in the Republican fringe, they’d join the Nazi party, etc. But now the Republican party has open fascists in it, so those fringe elements have been mainstreamed right into the core of the Republican party and White House. No matter how authoritarian, racist, corrupt, plutocratic, etc. administrations like Bush or Nixon were, they pale in comparison to Trump.
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