They’re sick of being wrong, and the cognitive dissonance is stressing them out so much that they’ve just gone into full-blown “break it all up and burn it all down” tantrum state.
They were wrong about racial integration and black civil rights destroying American society and about black people being happier under segregation.
They were wrong about women needing to stay in the home and uphold clearly defined gender roles.
They were wrong about a “moral majority” of conservative Christians launching a lasting religious revival that would “take the country back for Christ”. (Even evangelical Protestantism, after boom years in the '80s and '90s, is now declining in numbers.)
They were wrong in their vision of the US as a permanent majority-white country where comfortably small numbers of ethnic minorities might be perceived as being treated “no differently from” white people, but where English-speaking white people would overwhelmingly be the racial and cultural majority and default category in the American self-image.
They were wrong about the notion that supporting armed warfare on the part of Afghani mujahideen and Latin American right-wingers would spread freedom and democracy. Hoo boy, were they ever wrong about that.
They were wrong about Saddam Hussein having WMD, and about the Iraqis greeting Americans as liberators, and about the Iraq invasion being the pathway to freedom and democracy in the Middle East.
They were wrong about market-fundamentalist economic policies conducing to general economic stability and prosperity for ordinary people who work hard.
They were wrong about soaring stock markets and tax cuts for the wealthy meaning reliable economic security for ordinary people.
They were wrong about anthropogenic climate change being a hoax, or unimportant, or insignificant. In fact, they were wrong about the uselessness or counterproductiveness of environmental regulation in general, and the “conservationist-conservatives” among them who all along had some suppressed concerns about environmental damage are just now gaining the courage to really speak out.
They were wrong about gay people being sick or abnormal or evil, and about gay rights and same-sex marriage destroying American society.
They were wrong about the belief that resisting “European-style socialized medicine” would result in their having reliable, affordable, effective health care.
They were wrong about Muslim immigrants all being terrorists.
They were wrong about the “European socialist countries” being miserable and impoverished and sinking under their tax burdens and their envy of American freedoms.
They were wrong about identifying their own interests with those of wealthy individuals or corporations who had zero sense of loyalty to them in return.
They were wrong about Muslim immigrants committing more domestic terrorism than conservative white men.
They were wrong about labor unions being just unnecessary parasites whose absence wouldn’t make any difference to the availability of decent jobs or the protection of workers’ rights.
They were wrong about creationism or “intelligent design” or whatever being scientifically valid alternatives to evolutionary theory.
They were wrong about Trump building a border wall, or bringing peace to the Middle East, or draining the swamp, or benefiting US businesses and consumers by imposing tariffs, or bringing good blue-collar jobs back to the US, or pretty much anything else they ever believed about Trump.
They were wrong about COVID-19 being a hoax, or no worse than the flu, or a Chinese or Democratic plot, or a momentary problem that would just “vanish” soon, or that we wouldn’t hear anything more about after the election.
And most importantly, they were wrong in believing that the conservative politicians they ardently supported actually gave a shit about the well-being of any Americans if it would interfere with the increasing enrichment of the rich.
And, not surprisingly, they’re breaking down under the strain of all the disappointment and the suicidal clinging to ideologies and leaders that keep betraying them. They keep on swearing faith to a position that they’re told is right, and it keeps on turning out to be wrong, and the cumulative frustration is making them just flat-out ragey.
Of course, that’s not to say that liberals are never wrong themselves. We get things wrong all the time, and are constantly having to adjust and refocus and recognize unwelcome facts. But we haven’t been so cynically exploited as the conservatives have by an elite leadership that subjects them to being drastically in the wrong on almost every major issue of the past seventy years in order to harvest votes for policy positions that benefit the elites.
“Climate change is a hoax!” (The longer we can keep you believing that, the longer the fossil-fuel industry can remain profitable.)
“The atheists and gays and socialists are coming for your children!” (The more we can scare you with boogeymen of cultural/societal collapse, the less you’ll notice how much our economic policies are taking advantage of you.)
“Higher education is communist indoctrination and the mainstream media is all fake news!” (The more we can keep you uneducated, ill-informed, and paranoid about any data that contradicts what we’re telling you, the less likely you are to figure out that we don’t have your interests at heart.)