If you grew up playing football in Texas in the 80s, you began by playing smear the queer. It was an early indoctrination into homophobic tendencies. It’s also why the right is afraid of teaching history and tolerance in schools—they don’t want people to develop sympathy towards the oppressed and know how impressionable young minds are.
Many grow up and on larger stages, go on to play smear the queer, smear the minorities, smear the liberals, smear the poor, smear the government that doesn’t support their oligarch agenda, smear religious tolerance and now smear the rule of law.
I grew up Texan and I was a lot of things until college opened my eyes and introduced me to more than my small, mostly homogenous town views. I can definitely understand the Right’s campaign against logic and critical thought—it turns people off to their smear campaigns.