This great harm to America certainly didn't happen overnight.

In its current incarnation I'd be willing to guess that the GOP honed the necessary skills over the 60+ years that they have fine-tuned the SOuthern Strategy.

They learned how to prepare the ignorant to subsist 100% on lies, to hate "the different" (more specifically), and how to be willing to sacrifice their families to keep the GOP rich, and in power.

I defined the Southern Strategy elsewhere on Medium as, “Why does it matter if your whole white family is poor and starving? As long as we can promise the Black folk in America will starve also, your family's misery will be just fine. Right?”

It was basically a cakewalk after people like Lee Atwater gave their very souls to the GOP for these concepts. (And there is no proof that deathbed confessions will open those pearly gates, Lee. I was once told I was sitting on the very spot on a SC republican official relative's couch that Atwater had once sat. I took no chances, moving immediately. Cooties are nothing compared to GOP cooties.)

My personal belief is that the GOP is largely terrified of CRT because it will reveal the evil truth behind their manipulation of innocent, uneducated southerners by way of the Southern Strategy.

I've begun this book, and so far it is both remarkable and deeply distressing: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-long-southern-strategy-diane-d-blair-professor-of-southern-studies-and-an-assistant-professor-of-political-science-angie-maxwell/1131044111?ean=9780197579039

Thank you for sharing, James.