monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Orwellian "newspeak", "big lie" propaganda, and polarization through "red meat issues" are the tools of tyrants. The "uneducated" supporters, whom tyrants "love", lack the basic education and critical thinking skills necessary to know they are being used and victimized.

we have never fully processed a lesson of history: that great civilizations almost invariably collapse from within.

intellectually elite

You're speaking of the Politifact "lie of the year" award. They said:

Quote:

"Obama's ideas on health care were first offered as general outlines then grew into specific legislation over the course of his presidency. Yet Obama never adjusted his rhetoric to give people a more accurate sense of the law's real-world repercussions, even as fact-checkers flagged his statements as exaggerated at best.

And as we know, he apologized for this. Do you predict Trump will admit he got something wrong and apologize?

And let's recall that the subsequent lie of the year was awarded to "Obamacare is a government takeover of healthcare". Are you going to join them in that
one?

layman doesn't provide good or factual information,

You don't know much about history, do you? That's probably the most simplistic, and non-evidentiary, idea about the collapse of civilizations I've ever heard

Fall of the Roman Empire

There were several reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire. Each one intertweaved with the other. Many even blame the initiation of Christianity for the decline. Christianity made many Roman citizens into pacifists, making it more difficult to defend against the barbarian attackers. Also money used to build churches could have been used to maintain the Roman empire.

Decline in Morals and Values
Even during PaxRomana (A long period from Augstus to Marcus Aurelius when the Roman empire was stable and relativly peaceful) there were 32,000 prostitutes in Rome. Emperors like Caligula and Nero became infamous for wasting money on lavish parties where guests drank and ate until they became sick.

Political Corruption
One of the most difficult problems was choosing a new emperor. Unlike Greece where transition may not have been smooth but was at least consistent, the Romans never created an effective system to determine how new emperors would be selected. The choice was always open to debate between the old emperor, the Senate, the Praetorian Guard (the emperor's's private army), and the army.

None of which had anything to do with "candyass values of the cheese-eaters" which you seem to use as a totally biased term for liberal values, unless of course you're going to include Christian values as that

"candyass values of the cheese-eaters"

Quote:

"candyass values of the cheese-eaters"

Anyone who'd use such a phrase can be profitably ignored, MJ

"I, Donald Trump, am now the new sole owner of Monday Night Raw," he said in 2009. "I'm going to do stuff that's never been done before, that's never been seen before."

...When he entered the WWE Hall of Fame, he strutted into the ceremony in a black bow tie, with two women on his arms wearing blazing-red dresses. "Money, money, money, money" was on the speakers, and dollar bills lit up behind a screen. He crowed about the "Battle of the Billionaires" and said "it has the ratings, and the highest pay-per-view of wrestling of any kind."

"Next year, I will challenge Vince to a fight, and I will kick his ass if he wants," Trump said in the Hall of Fame speech. His entire family sat in the front row dressed impeccably and smiling, just like they did during the campaign.

Donald Trump, wrestler "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and Vince McMahon attend the press conference held by Battle of the Billionaires to announce the details of Wrestlemania 23 at Trump Tower.

And even though he received some boos from the Madison Square Garden crowd during his induction speech, Trump reveled in the attention.

“Sorry losers and haters, but I LOVED the great energy in Madison Square Garden during my speech. The WWE thought it was incredible - it was!” Trump tweeted the next morning at 6:25 a.m.

Trump's one true gift is his ability to get his critics to surrender up their own dignity somehow of their own free will. That is just what he is trying to do to the press at this moment. It's no different from the dominance politics he played on his opponents in the GOP primaries.

...Trump is a punk and a bully. People who don't surrender up their dignity to him unhinge him.

Assuming your data is correct and a reliable indicator, then perhaps what we need is more competition and less government involvement. If the insurance costs $ 10K/year for each individual, then the cost for 360 million Americans will be 3,6 x 10 E 12 or $3.6 thousand billion/year. A large strain on the national debt. Alternatively we could nationalize the service and ration care for everyone, Perhaps that is what you are suggesting. I believe we can do much better than that, with some new insurance law that will enhancew the free market.