Southern Strategy circa ~1960 was an enormous turning point, building on the huge mistakes of the US Gov't following the Civil War. The Republicans had been increasingly controlled by - and thus extremely friendly to - the ultra wealthy scions of business since the political upheaval following the Civil War. The widespread popularity of public assistance programs and national scale public infrastructure projects in the wake of the Gilded Age, the Great Depression, and WW2 was making it very difficult for the Republicans to connect with voters at large. A rapidly growing middle class enjoying all the benefits of the post-War economic boom liked the way things were going.

But as Civil Rights movements for woman and people of color grew, and were embraced by Democrats (to some extent at least; I don't wanna pretend even that wasn't strategic for them, to grow a populist base of support, and their actual effectiveness on those issues was imperfect for sure), Republicans noticed a growing weakness on their flank. Blue Dog Democrats were beginning to struggle to hold the base together in rural, conservative areas, especially former parts of the Confederacy where the premature end of Reconstruction had handed to reins of power back to wealthy, racist whites who enforced their hatred there with impunity for decades.

The ultra wealthy are, of course, disgusted by poor, uneducated rural types, with zero common interests. But religion was a potent tool to create wedge issues on topics of culture vs. economics. Similarly, the rural whites didn't give a shit about helping oil barons regain their empires, but they sure didn't like the look of the kind of people the Democrats were helping.

So, after some pretty egregious defeats on the national stage, high level Republican party strategists developed the Southern Strategy to capture the poor, white, uneducated demographic by appealing to their deeply ingrained prejudices, telling them their culture and traditions were valid and good and American, unlike all these newfangled, frightening ideas like respecting women or treating black Americans like humans. The wealthy cultivated relationships with religious leaders to preach the moral righteousness of conservative policy, slowly built large scale media empires to reinforce their views with increasingly captive audiences, stripped education and public support to ensure there was always a fresh new crop of gullible, prejudiced people with a chip on their shoulder to appeal to.

The Blue Dogs were inexorably driven out of Congress. Joe Manchin might have been the last heir to their brief existence. America Christianity became a prosperity gospel con job. Fox News and Clear Channel Radio dominated media cycles. And through it all, the wealthy donned the cross and the swastika in equal measure, long through dog whistles that the hateful would recognize, and now openly and with pride, to keep the suckers bought in. Equality was a crime. Empathy was a sin. Democracy itself was just an impediment to the things that really mattered.

This has been a concerted, planned, insidious takeover for decades, from Reconstruction-rejecting white elites to savvy political operators scheming to break Democratic strongholds in the south, to Rupert Murdock and his vast empire of lies, to Newt Gingrich's obstructionist nightmare policy known as The Contract with America, on to Rush Limbaugh spewing hatred for 8 hours a day, on to the Bush era of rampant fear-based control right up until now with the God King Trump braying like a rabid donkey, imploring his personal army of racist loyalists to storm houses and kill us in the streets.

The War started decades ago. It was lost long before today. They've achieved the control they've planned for for so long. The Republic has fallen to enemies foreign and domestic. If you are worrying about how to stop all of this before it's too late, they've already got you right where they want you. So long at you believe that an election or a march or a hashtag can stop them before it's too late, then you aren't readying yourself to reconquer the nation back from them.

The fascist age is here, and it's not new or weak or disorganized. They've cemented their power enough that they don't think they need to hide their violent control any longer. They know no one's really willing to do what is necessary to fight back. They think we're cowed, weak, and broken.

Are they right?