This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “How did the US fall so far? This isn’t an Anti-Trump question. I really want to know how it became okay to hate someone or even attack them because of who they voted for. At what point did things go so wrong? See comments for further context.”

RE: “I sincerely want to know how it became okay to hate someone or even attack them because of who they voted for.”

If you sincerely want to know, you must go further than this recent election.

This didn’t happen overnight, and it didn’t happen over just one election.

This is an entirely predictable outcome of over 50 years of demonization of the left by the right.

Things have been going wrong for a long time, and they went overboard when the right began treating their “honourable opposition” as enemy combatants.

The demonization has just been getting worse over time, and electing Trump was the final straw.

You must understand that the hatred isn’t about “who they voted for” as much as the values they voted for.

They voted for an evil monster — convicted of 34 felony counts, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American citizens, has caused the wanton destruction of countless lives throughout his entire life, and he gloats about doing that. He laughs at the people who worked for them and has refused to pay them for their work. He’s caused people to go bankrupt because of that, and he cares less about that than about the hamburger he ate last month. He’s an admitted sexual predator — he bragged about it, and he’s been accused of rape. He was a close friend of Jeffrey Epstein, who trafficked in underage sex slaves. He’s a pedophile who has openly lusted after his daughter.

He’s an overt racist who tried to have five innocent men killed to satisfy his murderous lust. The man is so much scum of the Earth that the entire state he called home and has done business in most of his life has run him out of it. He instigated a treasonous coup against the nation when he lost the last election.

People aren’t so much pissed at him but at the state of affairs where millions of people chose his brand of hatred to define the nation they love.

People are dying right now because of their hatred.

Children were hauled away from their families in cages and sold for a profit the last time he was president.

That’s what people hate.

More of that evil is returning, and millions don’t care.

That’s why families are being torn apart.

That’s why people are shutting the door on people who welcome that evil back into an acceptable standard of living for the nation.

School kids have been dying from unhinged freaks with guns on an almost daily basis throughout the nation, and instead of wanting to do something to save lives, those people voted for more of that.

That kind of evil cannot be tolerated without giving up something important about one’s integrity and self-respect.

The U.S. fell because it’s been falling at the behest of the misanthropic plutocrats who regard average citizens as disposable chattels.

The U.S. has been falling for decades, and it got worse, beginning with Ronald Reagan’s demonization of government, betrayal of unions, tossing out mental health patients onto the streets, massive upward wealth transfers to impoverish the working class and sowing distrust between citizens.

Eliminating the protections ensuring the citizens were informed correctly by the Fourth Estate opened the door for a corrupt monster like Rupert Murdoch to steadily drip hatred into uncritical minds who got ever more desperate with rising costs and vanishing incomes to arrive at a state of general insanity.

We are here today because of a visible mental health pandemic affecting one in five citizens.

We are here today, repeating history from 100 years ago to almost the day when the Nazis threatened global domination under their jackbooted heel.

They’re back again, which means everyone who supported a return to an evil regime dominating humanity is an enemy of decent society, whether they are blood relatives or not.

This is the beginning of the next major war the world is facing, and people need to wake TF up because it will only get uglier now and result in chaos until people realize we need each other to survive our challenges as a species.

That means all the people who want to demonize and hate those who are unlike them are enemies of humanity.

That’s why families are fracturing into warring pieces.

They chose hatred, and that just can’t be tolerated any longer because hatred is a fire that will consume everyone and everything we value.

Fifty years of this means they finally got what they wanted.