@JGoldman10,
Bush/Cheney administration rushed forward unprecedented government powers in response to 9/11. Americans found their rights trampled, stuck in expensive permanent wars instead of domestic investment in our infrastructure and our people. When Obama/Biden ran the blowout enthusiasm was for a candidate who would restore order, undo the expansive Patriot Act overreach, dismantle the surveillance state and domestic spying abuses out of our intelligence agencies.
Nope. The criticisms of Obama by anti-war Democrats is because he never followed through on promises made. Instead took the helm of that fully functional death-star and *took the controls for himself*. We saw establishment Dems climb into bed with the corrupt intel agencies and corporations that abused us so bad in prior decades. With the bank bailouts on top of that there was sense of betrayal. Deceit weighs heavy.
Further compounded by international outrages such as the raid on Kim Dotcoms home in New Zealand. Kim had never set foot in the US. He's an unsavory character. Essentially guilty of running a competing service to Drop Box. Through the State Department the US put massive pressure on their government to carry out the raid. As lawsuits moved forward it was clear the entire scenario was improper. Up there with the persecution of Assange in terms of injustice. The question is why would America burn so much political capital to carry out that raid? Kim's great offense was crudely telling the US entertainment industry to go f themselves when they'd made demands of him for decades. Kim's take was he was not a US citizen nor subject to US laws, thus the US entertainment industries nasty letters sent by legal could go pound sand. That brings us to Biden. When DMCA passed that was Biden's baby. Delivered legislative tools to the entertainment industry to hammer the Google's and tech platforms on copyright infringements, automate takedown requests, and there was no teeth in the bill for false flags. Tech companies get raked over the coals with fines but no recourse if the entertainment industry messed it up. As result, entertainment industry outsourced the task to third parties and we continue complaining about false copyright strikes to today. Biden has long been the go to contact when the entertainment industry wanted something done in DC, thus the whole mess lands at his feet widely considered evident he's a corrupt party that can't be trusted. Tech/Law blog Techdirt, platform that coined phrase 'Streisand Effect', has archives that cover all of this in detail.
That sets up 2016. In every way the election can be summarized as what happens when the population feels ignored and their issues unrepresented by government. That was the rocket fuel behind Bernie in the polls. When Bernie was dragged out back and put down in what appeared to be a non-transparent process, that put support behind Trump. If you can't get Bernie then send a bull into the china shop to smash up the Ivory Tower. A uncouth option was selected purposefully, because a whole lot of people see the establishment left and right as worse than the worst labels pinned on Trump.
In that viewpoint the louder establishment figures cried and theatrically whipped up performative outrage to harm Trump, okay great. Establishment sucked. Our elites suck. A reckoning is necessary. Must be something good taking place.
The loud "damnit" from the antifa types to the trump types is we're now back to square 1, hard to bridge that divide but here we are. The establishment types who had total control after 9/11 are now back in power and they're securing their systems, making elections even less transparent, so that no outside candidate can get in and challenge their system in the future. We've voted back into power the War party and will get War. And probably VAT taxes to go with that.
What does not get enough appreciation is how fundamentally different our media industries are today. In 1990 information distribution became essentially free. This destroyed business model for the companies who previously held monopoly on ability to distribute news. Suddenly anyone can create and pump out their own information from their living room. The first change was cut funding meant journalists and their research teams were fired. Couldn't afford them anymore and remain profitable. They were replaced by massively scaling up sensational reality-tv style bloggers. The game is now optimize sensationalized outrage and fear inducing stories. Spam viral trends for clicks as rapidly as possible. That process leads to what we're observing today with social media dunking culture of the blue checkmarks. Our problems are those of abundance. If you eat junk food all day you become unhealthy. Something similar happens with junk food information. Consume those exciting dopamine inducing fear and outrage stories all day, that repetition creates a widespread distorted view on reality. Information is free, there's so much out there that whatever your favorite rage inducing drama is you can read a brand new story on that topic every day. We've now got those up in arms over exceedingly rare events as outlets compete to sensationalize the topic the most in the fight for your attention and time. In this new media environment, accuracy doesn't matter. All that matters is attention and influence through performative emotion. There's signs that at highest levels of government and business that skewed perspective has set in.
We had a crap outsider and joined the dominant establishments "resistance" to restore their fading empire to securely holding their throne. Long Live the Establishment.