The smaller pachyderm in the room: a significant percentage of our fellow citizens are
people we would not want living in our neighborhood or anywhere in our community. They are small-minded, self-centered and astonishingly and proudly ignorant.
Their world consists of their like-minded friends, right-wing media and internet sites that preach racism, misogyny and all manner of hateful conspiracy theories. Like their cult leader, Donald Trump, they see no problem with kids in cages, discrimination against anyone not straight, white and Christian and suppressing the votes of the poor and people of color. They deal with the hypocrisy and cruelty of their hero mostly by not thinking about it: if they and theirs have cable TV, gas in their cars and food on the table, that is all the proof they need that Trump has made America great again. If it will not impact them in the very near future, it just doesn't matter.
We pass these people daily as we go to work and shop. Their children go to school with ours. They sit on our city councils and county boards.
If you are "different" or willing to defend those who are, know this: given any excuse and "permission" from their leadership, these neighbors of ours would happily destroy you and me. Some would eliminate our jobs or destroy our businesses. Some would harass us until we fled from their community. But, do not doubt that some, with the right instigation, would beat and stomp us to death.
This is much of Trump's base. Refusing to look at it does not make it less ugly.
= new reply since forum marked as read
And yes, the expletives are NECESSARY! Who, in their right mind, should be okay with the ceaseless, near-40-year flood of lies and hatred emanating from the right?
Thanks, calimary.
... which is fine with me. We have plenty of them in Pennsylvania but they aren't my neighbors. Another factor is that many of them are old and dying off. When the liberal, progressive, Democratic voters (like us) - when we do our jobs and elect the right representatives, we won't have to worry about these weak, old deplorables.
Take heart Atticus, it's going to be OK! You may be in a red state, I don't know, but the blue team will win in the next election.
I have a feeling it's going to come back. Stay strong my friend!
The more anxious and uncertain the times, the more people are likely to be drawn to troublemaking, destabilizing leaders who use resentments and promise "reform" to try to get power that aware, sensible people won't give them. And of course these have become very uncertain, anxious times.
What IS new is that we now know that people come to reflect their leaders' decisions far more reliably than they select leaders who reflect their own principles and goals. We identify with groups, then usually accept the groups' choices of leaders, and then adopt the attitudes and goals of the leaders who get control of those groups.
The primaries are currently a second stage, of course. We all vary widely in just how much we'll loyally support whatever our leaders decide, but we all have this tendency to some degree. Good leaders uplift, bad ones drag us down.
On the right, as Republican leaders became more and more socially and economically extreme, corrupt, and fascistic, much of the right has, in copying that, become close to their worst versions of themselves. This could reverse amazingly fast -- if somehow they were allowed to elect better leaders. 
But they would be better with good leaders, have been and can be again. Some far better.
And to be part of the solution, rather than the problem, we at least need to understand there are solutions, that change causes change, and big problems create reactions. Even potentially to the problem of neighbors we currently fear and despise but who will always be with us.
We live among them and hold our tongues, for the most part.
