Radd said2Bnaked saidSvnw688 said^^Interesting article, thanks. I still suspect that the Trump factor is so unprecedented that the 1992 parallel is not controlling. We're in uncharted waters with Trump.
What got us in this mess??
Good question, and one I think about often. This is my observation:
• American has a large portion of rural, uneducated voters. They don't have the intellect to view many different issues at once and weight the pros and cons of each issue. So they vote off of their greatest fear, which in this case is terrorism. Trump blindly promises to rid us of terrorism via banning foreigners so they in turn blindly believe him and that's good enough for them. The same thing happened with George W. Bush. The man was a complete idiot but he assured the ignorant that he was a good Christian man and that was enough to get him "elected." So you see, I believe it's simply an issue of a lack of education (and in some cases, absolutely stupidity.) There really is no other answer.
I would certainly agree that having uneducated and uncritical voters, at least in the realms of politics, both domestic & international, as well as in economics, science, history, and many other topics that are relevant to our choices regarding candidates & issues, is a major problem in the US. Add to that the tendency to have blind & unquestioning loyalty to one's initial pick in politics, as if that person or party were a sports team, or a preferred brand of pickup truck.
An inability to reconsider, reevaluate, and to compromise politically that has been nurtured by the US Right for decades now. And Trump is the hateful & toxic product that has grown from that poisoned partisan extremism. That is recent years has been reinforced by an alliance with religious fanaticism.
What better supporters to recruit than the closed minds who believe the answers to all science, to all questions, to all human situations, are to be found exclusively in the Bible? Nothing more reliable than having brainwashed Christian soldiers to fight for you. And it doesn't make any difference if Donald Trump wouldn't know the difference between taking the oath of office with his hand on a Bible or on a telephone directory, as long as the faithful THINK he's on their team that's all that matters to them.
They can always rationalize reasons to tell more skeptical people after their minds are already made up. To paraphrase from "Alice in Wonderland": decision first, justification later.