It amazes me that so many people still love to trot out the old–and I believed, sufficiently dismantled–argument that Democrats started the KKK, so they are truly the party of Racists and Segregationists…while Republicans are the party of Lincoln, and therefore must be the good guys who believe in Equality and Liberty.

I never can tell whether these people are making intentionally bad faith arguments based on disingenuous, and manipulative cherry-picked snapshots of party standards from a century and a half earlier…or if they’re sincerely so historically illiterate that they just accept this argument at face value from other people who presented the bad faith argument for them. It’s sad either way, because they either aren’t capable of thinking for themselves or they aren’t capable of intellectual honesty…and neither of those traits should be praised or rewarded.

I want to get one big fucking fact out of the way before I address the falsehood there. This one is going to be hard for some people to hear, especially some of us White People…but it’s something that needs to be dealt with before I even begin digging into the process by which the Democratic and Republican Platforms became what they are today.

First of all, America as a nation is absolutely built on a foundation of White Supremacy, and that corrupt substrate still exists at the core of our society (regardless of party affiliation). It’s like a poison in the bedrock that finds its way into our spiritual and cultural soil and groundwater, tainting everything we do…and until we actively work together to leech that shit out of there, we’ll never be clean of it. The fact of the matter is that neither major party (nor the vast majority of smaller political parties) has been particularly interested in putting in that work, because the bulk of American politicians still benefit too much from their (conscious or unconscious) privileged status. That is a truth we need to remain aware of and vigilant to acknowledge and address whenever and wherever we see it manifesting.

Now, onto the claims made by people who insist on tossing 19th-Century Party Affiliations around as if they’re relevant to the platforms we see today. Those people are fixating on the titles while intentionally ignoring the most salient detail, which is to address which group was “Liberal” and which was “Conservative” at the time of Lincoln.

Just answering that single question turns the argument on its head. But I don’t mind going further into how the party demographics transitioned from what they were in the mid-to-late 19th Century to what they have been during my whole lifetime, and I’m currently 46 years old.

It started to take hold way back in the 1890s, in large part thanks to a Nebraska politician, William Jennings Bryan, who became the Democratic National Committee’s nominee for President, in response to backlash against President Grover Cleveland and the Conservative Democrats that dominated the party at the time. Unfortunately for Bryan, he lost to McKinley…twice.

After taking a brief hiatus from Presidential Campaigns, Bryan lost the Presidential Election for a third time, this time to Taft. But his influence didn’t fade, and he became Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson (until he ultimately resigned from the position).

During his life, Bryan made huge tectonic shifts in the Democratic Party. He drew in people from the political left (progressives) while fighting against American Imperialism, the influence of men like J. P. Morgan and other members of the privileged class who sought to manipulate American Politics for their gain through Crony Capitalism, and many traditionally Conservative ideals. All of this, while also supporting Women’s Suffrage and the League of Nations, and being the first Presidential Candidate to receive endorsement of the American Federation of Labor for his unflinching support of Labor Unions.

He did oppose American involvement in WWI, supported Prohibition, and actively fought against the teaching of Evolution and Darwinism in the Scopes Trial. So, on several matters, he and I would not have been in agreement. He also refused to attack the KKK directly, though not because he supported it, but because he expected it to fall apart on its own. He had more faith in the spirit of the American People than he perhaps should have, in that regard…but that was who he was to the core. He was a man of faith, which largely influenced his decision to take on the role he played in the Scopes Trial.

He was far from perfect, but he was emblematic of what the Democratic Party was gradually becoming.

William Jennings Bryan was arguably the figure one can most easily point to as the origin of the shift in party alignments. But he was only the first set of symbolic supports in creating the bridge that spanned that gulf.

While the transition may have started a few decades earlier, it wasn’t until FDR and the “New Deal” era that we started to really see Liberals as the Democrats we see today and Conservatives as the Republicans we recognize. FDR was, in many ways, the apex of that shift in party dynamics and platform. I would love to see a single Republican today adopt a platform as progressive as FDR’s. Unlike William Jennings Bryan, we all know at least a little bit about FDR and the “New Deal.”

It started as mostly a series of Economic Reforms: offering relief for the poor and unemployed, reforming the financial systems to avoid future economic collapse, and building the economy back up from the dismal lows following the crash of 1929. Major changes to the Federal Reserve, combined with the establishment of the FDIC and the Securities Exchange Commission, along with other Financial Regulatory Bodies, were engineered under FDR’s guidance to restore consumer confidence and bring the U.S. back from the brink of full financial failure. And it worked.

Though ostensibly a response to the Great Depression, there was much of FDR’s “New Deal” that cemented the new bedrock for the Democratic Party, outside of the purely economic considerations.

While modern Libertarians like to pretend that Corporations should be free to act outside of Regulatory Space and that the Free Market will force them to behave ethically, there is no historical precedent for that being the case. It was, in fact, Federal Regulations (and the emergence of Regulatory Agencies) under FDR that brought an end to some of the most egregious examples of Corporate predation. The National Labor Relations, Social Security, and Fair Labor Standards Acts protected workers, ensured protection for the elderly, disabled, and unemployed, fought against Child Labor, supported the development of Labor Unions, provided the 40-Hour Work Week, established a Federal Minimum Wage, and otherwise made it safer and less oppressive to be a worker in the U.S.

It was Conservative control of Congress (including the presence of many Conservative Democrats) that kept FDR from going even further with his “New Deal” Policies. But, during that era, the Democratic Party was reshaped further into being the Party of workers, racial and ethnic minorities, intellectuals, and others who had previously been traditionally aligned with the Republican Party.

Then we come to the Civil Rights Era, where the party transition reaches the Third Act, and the Southern Strategy (that only those invested in a fictional version of history will claim is a lie).

While men like Bryan and FDR reshaped much of the Democratic Party, there was, unfortunately, still a great deal of the previous century’s delineation present in the American South. The Civil Rights Era brought this to a head, as was always going to happen. The Democratic Party and, to a lesser extent, the Republican Party suffered from a sort of Identity Crisis, wherein members of the respective parties were closer in alignment with their opposition depending on where they happened to be located geographically.

Unlike the previous two Acts of the Three-Act transition of party platforms and demographics, the Southern Strategy was the work of Republicans. It was their effort to obtain support from White Southerners who were still Democrats (though they had little in common with Democrats outside of the dozen or so states involved).

There’s a strange symmetry involved in seeing this from a remove, decades afterward. Where Bryan started the process of pushing the Democratic Party to the Left, it was the Southern Strategy implemented by Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater that shifted the Republican Party to the Right.

One could argue (and I think, accurately so) that this started with the Republican Party taking on the banner of “States’ Rights,” which was previously a Democratic stance dating back to the time before the Civil War. This was in direct opposition to the platform of Abraham Lincoln, whom Republicans still want to claim, while defying virtually every aspect of Lincoln’s stated beliefs. This was part of Barry Goldwater’s “Southern Strategy” which focused on courting Southern Whites and dismissing further efforts to appeal to Black Voters, which included open opposition to the Civil Rights Movement as well as to Kennedy’s platform promoting expanded Unemployment Benefits, increased Social Security and Minimum Wage, sending aid to Economically Distressed regions of the country (including cities with larger minority populations), increasing Housing Availability, and so on. But it was the opposition to Kennedy’s Civil Rights policies that was most important here.

Kennedy fought for Voter Education and the removal of the Poll Tax (in addition to further increasing access to Voting Rights for Blacks). He used Executive Orders to promote Equal Opportunity and Anti-Discrimination for Employment, Housing, and Federal Contracts…becoming a champion of Affirmative Action within the Federal Workforce and beyond. Kennedy also struck a massive blow against Jim Crow by making it illegal, as it concerned Interstate Commerce.

These were all policies that Barry Goldwater and Conservative Republicans opposed. One need look no further than the conflict between Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater leading up to the 1964 Presidential Election to see the massive fissure growing in the Republican Party under Goldwater’s influence.

It’s no wonder he lost to Lyndon B. Johnson, with his Regressive, Pro-Segregationist, and Anti-Civil Rights stances even revolting significant portions of the Republican Party at the time (the remaining Liberal and Progressive elements at least).

It was around that time when Strom Thurmond left the Democratic Party and joined the GOP, where he helped to manage Nixon’s campaign in the South. He was far from the last to do so, followed by notable figures like Jesse Helms and countless numbers of formerly Democratic voters. Many Republicans remained with their Party, believing they could rehabilitate it or that this shift toward Racist and Conservative Values would be temporary…but it was no longer recognizable as the Party of Lincoln by that point.

I’d like to make note of one funny aside. As counterintuitive as it may seem, George Wallace famously refused to leave the Democratic Party like many of his like-minded peers (despite repeatedly being repudiated at the national level by the majority). He did gradually soften his perspectives regarding Segregation and White Supremacy. Whether that was sincere or a performative shift to better continue surviving as he had up to that point is anyone’s guess.

Richard Nixon took Goldwater’s playbook and ran with it far more successfully, and I don’t mean that solely in that he actually won a Presidential Election. He focused his platform on the Coded Language of “States’ Rights” and “Law and Order,” which might sound familiar to voters who have been paying attention since 2015 or so.

The Third Act really doesn’t conclude until Reagan’s campaign in 1980 (and the subsequent eight years he led the Nation down the toilet), where Lee Atwater’s assistance helped to shift the overt Racism to more Dogwhistle-Coded language, focused on Economic Policies that would transparently benefit Whites more than any other group.

And it’s not difficult to discern how I feel about Ronald Reagan and the absolute disaster he was for America and the U.S. Economy, creating devastation from which we’re still picking through the rubble today.

So yes, the Southern Strategy is a real thing, and one that was discussed openly by the Candidates and Political Advisers involved in both its development and implementation. It’s on record, and trying to pretend it’s some Conspiracy Theory is ludicrous, at best, and entirely reliant on people never fact-checking what they want to believe is true. This isn’t like PizzaGate or any of the subsequent QAnon nonsense paraded around by the least credible people on the Political Right in America. There’s actually clear, concise data and historical records that don’t need to be twisted and distorted into the most bizarre shapes, explaining the Southern Strategy and how it was done.

Finally, to the people who want to make these bad faith arguments, all I can say is that you should read a book or two, and take some time to learn about American History…because even our High School Textbooks would have provided sufficient evidence to counter most of these ignorant claims. It leads me to believe that you didn’t retain much during your education, and that’s all the proof we need that the Department of Education should be more involved (rather than less) in establishing nationwide standards that aren’t associated with Standardized Tests, but on different methods of teaching and diverse styles of learning, to ensure that our Natural Born Citizens know at least as much as Naturalized Citizens have to.

I know I could pass a Citizenship Exam, do you? When taking that test, there is no Participation Trophy (and no points awarded) for waving a flag and displaying performative (though ultimately false) patriotism based on revisionist understandings that you didn’t even come up with for yourself.