This is not a new phenomenon. There were hordes of rabid, frothing, cussing angry people screaming insults at a small child outside of New Orleans fifty or more years ago, because she was going to school, and she happened to be born with dark skin. We've had a good chunk of loonies in our population forever, I suspect. But somewhere around Clinton vs Reagan, the right wing decided to unleash the loonies as a political force by invoking their key hatreds and obsessions as important national issues and stirring them up to throw their weight behind the party. The looniness became a major infectious vector in American political discourse because of this manipulation, amplifying the extremists until rational voices became swamped in the racket.

A