@hawkeye10,
Quote:How did we get to Trump?
1.
Campaign finances: by allowing unlimited private financing of elections, the US provided a strong incentive for politicians to keep those who pay them and get them elected happy, i.e. the ultra-rich. From there, there was only a tiny step to an ultra-rich becoming president. If Washington is already 'privatised', then it follows that one shrewd private operator, such as Trump, can make an hostile takeover on it.
2.
La Trahison des Clercs: American intellectuals either became co-opted by one lobby or the other, or they have been cornered and defamed when they didn't want to submit (e.g. Micheal Moore); news media like CNN or FAUX News are so deeply pro-American in their international coverage and so strongly partisan in their national coverage that no one can take them seriously anymore. Hence the critique of the 'mainstream media' lying to their audience; there's some truth to that.
3.
The dumbing down of America: in parallel to the above, public education was 'democratized' i.e. asked to absorb many more people but also defunded overtime, while private schools/universities were promoted, so that a good education becomes something you have to pay for with an arm and a leg, otherwise you just get some worthless piece of paper as a diploma (caricaturing a bit here). This limits social mobility, making sure that the children of the current economic elite will secure a good-looking degrees able to sustain executive careers, while the children of the poor won't and will thus have to stay 'in their place'. It also created two generations of fairly dumb Americans, who tend to
resent high education institutions (because they were bared from accessing them) and their graduates. This adds to point 2 above, and together with the rise of social media, means that these people now seek guidance on Youtube and Facebook and ****...
4.
Climate change denial: Likewise, science as an institution has been debased, yelled at, corrupted and paid for, nowhere more aggressively than in the US, because science was saying some 'inconvenient truth' about climate change. So Americans were actively and effectively disinformed for decades about it, leading to them starting to loose faith even in
bona fide scientists. Usher in the post-truth moment, with "truthers" and "vaccers" and them believers in green lizards from outaspace...
4.
Russian meddling: when the electorate is misinformed, disoriented, in distrust of their own intellectuals and leaders, looking for clues in Facebook and Youtube... then they become easy to manipulate. So much so that anyone with the means and the resolve can now steer the US 'democracy' wherever he wants it to go by manipulating the electorate. Enters Putin.
