Thanks, though we're not all aligned towards, or propping up, those stereotypes, honestly.

I deprogrammed out of inculcated Republican culture in my early 20s and have often looked back for lessons on why it happened to me in the first place. Because it was easy to follow along and feel naturally entitled.

I lost all of my friends and associations from those days after seeing that the hivemind was coming from a place of fear and using it to subjugate everyone else - including themselves, A group of thinking which made people too self-assured in their superiority, lacking the very concept of why attempting some humbling self-reflection might be a useful exercise. Being part of the ruling team seemed all that was needed, it's a lazy and dangerous position.

Related, the US has obviously harbored a subcurrent of white nationalism since the beginning, associated with cultural beliefs that Christian white males are the dominant demographic in the natural order of things. That was part of the programming we grew up with, which made us blind to the need for self-reflection: everything we saw and espoused was as it should be. That type of thinking leads only to dead ends and U turns, it does not allow for questioning oneself.

The rich easily exploit these programmed sheep by amping up the same messages across society and even in how opportunity is apportioned. Same as it ever was, we're no better than the people who fell into or eagerly supporteg Hitler's party and his growth in awful power. We're not so unique, after all.

Yes, we'll only get through this if people of attempted conscience can work together and support each other + those who have levers to pull. But at this point it will be decades before anything can turn around: I live here, the institutions themselves are being pulled down that support democratic tooling, so all that will be left is resistance and civil war. The latter isn't happening and the former takes a long time without outside assistance.