Fear is an important part of the emotional posture built into white America revanchsim, the semi-conscious “conservative” social movement to "take our country back" that seems to comprise about half of us white Americans in 2023.

(I used to call what was going on White Demographic Decline Derangement Syndrome. But now that the derangement has real world effects – like an attempted coup against the constitutional government, etc. – I think revanchism [“The political policy of endeavouring to regain lost territory”] is a better term because it signals something we have to fight back against.)

I like your way of seeing the issue @Art X; the main problem they seem to have is that they can't support themselves. Most, if not all red states suck money from other states to survive. So they make up stuff to keep themselves busy with fake outrages to bring the whole system to a halt ...