Do you think that maybe this is all just the systemic hidden racism/xenophobia etc. that has been here forever but was just hidden more? I think I might have a different point of view coming from the south or I guess I should say, maybe some people have always been more open about SOME of the cruelty that we are now seeing everywhere.

I remember during Obama's first couple of years as POTUS, at pretty much "men only" fire pits that were in my backyard so I would be there at some point, there were horrible, disgusting racist and xenophobic  things that were openly said. I would push back, but you could tell that these were things these boys felt extremely comfortable saying, which is why I would have to leave. I bet if we had had fire pits in the 1990s though, in a rural southern county, we would have heard the same thing. And when one can look down on people like that, its not hard to make fun of people and bully people.

I'm not sure about other parts of the country and how it has changed or if people have just stopped keeping their thoughts underground. I guess even down here some of it has become more intense over the last few decades. Look at the xenophobia with 9/11. Maybe throwing away the Fairness Doctrine and the rise of talking heads like Rush, and Bill O, Sean H, etc in the 90s helped make it worse. But again, maybe it was there just hiding right under the surface? What do you think?