This is, no joke, one of my actual theories.
A whole lot of people in our society have legitimately gone insane in the last 20 years.
It started with 9/11. A massive, shocking, scary event that few of us could do anything about. A lot of people seemed to undergo actual personality changes after that (Dennis Miller is the poster boy for this). Understandable, maybe, but not healthy.
Then there was Obama, as you mention. People still stressed over 9/11 and the War on Terror, and all the conspiracy theories flourishing in the years leading up to the 2008 election suddenly had their underlying racism stoked by Obama actually winning the election. There had always been some level of “The other party’s President is an idiot”, but with Obama, this just seemed to erupt like crazy. The anti-President comments became more plentiful, and more deranged.
And then there was Trump, who stoked all the fires of the above. Muslims were bad, let’s ban them from entering the country. Obama and the FBI were plotting against me. “Lock her up!” Mexicans are rapists and drug dealers. No attempt to calm things down, in fact, the crazier you acted, the more Trump liked you.
And then the pandemic. Fuck, at this point, I’m feeling a bit crazy, forget everyone else I see around me. You folks are all friggen’ nuts.