@tyghebright The US red states have been whipped up into a frenzy on multiple fronts, fuelled with religious zeal (it carries among people who have no religious affiliation, but who give them power through their vote and money for other reasons).
The paranoia is resulting in untold real-world consequences, and the instigators are twisted enough to believe that this is winning.
There has to be a word for a thing that is so absurdly, bizarrely, grotesquely hypocritical. It is utterly horrific.