Over the four decades since the Reagan 1980s, the merely rich have become the morbidly rich while average working people have gone from a middle-class lifestyle being possible with a single income to two or more wage-earners being the now-necessary norm in American households.

This crisis of economic inequality has, predictably, led working-class whites to look for villains and scapegoats, and today’s fascist GOP is happy to supply them. They’ve ginned up moral panics around trans kids, bathrooms, abortion, American history in our schools, and affirmative action, all to direct attention away from their embrace of fascism and their ongoing theft of over $50 trillion — so far — from the American middle class.

Using racism, faux nationalism, misogyny, and the corruption of both democracy and the rule of law, Republicans are cementing their power in state after state with extreme voter suppression, gerrymandering, dismantling of checks-and-balances, and packing the courts.