Every other “group” in America is now a protected species.
The *only* ‘group’ you can openly mock and despise is rednecks/hicks/hillbillies, all of which are associated with “the south”.
Poison has to work its way out of a body, somehow, or the body will die.
That is what this is, at its root.
“Us” -always- needs a “them” to demonize and hate.
It’s the south’s turn, now that all the other “them” have been declared off limits.
It’s just going to get worse.
It’s the nature of “us”.
Convenient for the eternal “us” that the latest “them” just happens to be the last bastion of Bible Belt ideology.
Pity the ones who cannot see they are doing the Devil’s/Dems’/Liberals’ work, for them.
It's like a replay of the hate campaign against the South in the years before the Late Unpleasantness. You might find this book about that episode interesting.