Boot is on a journey.
"Upon closer examination, it’s obvious that the history of modern conservative is permeated with racism, extremism, conspiracy-mongering, isolationism and know-nothingism.
I disagree with progressives who argue that these disfigurations define the totality of conservatism; conservatives have also espoused high-minded principles that I still believe in, and the bigotry on the right appeared to be ameliorating in recent decades. But there has always been a dark underside to conservatism that I chose for most of my life to ignore. It’s amazing how little you can see when your eyes are closed!"
At some point he will realize what Lee Atwater explained in the 80s.
"You start out in 1954 by saying, "
Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like
forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff.
You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger.""
Conservative "high-minded principles" are about one of four things:
1. "doing away with the racial problem one way or the other"
2. controlling women, especially women's bodies
3. helping the rich get richer
4. Maintaining the power to do all of the above
Name a "high-minded principle" and it goes back to one of those four things.