Same reason some people bought Yugo’s.
In 1926, H.L. Mencken, a columnist for The Baltimore Sun, wrote: “No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby…”
Toffler, in Future Shock, wrote: “The illiterate of the 21st Century will not be those who cannot read and write. It will be those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”
Very well, but this implies that ignorance is some sort of organic condition. As much as I admire both Mencken and Toffler, we in the US are also the heirs of a good 60 years of:
- The reduction of taxes on the very wealthy;
- The transfer of vast wealth from the working and middle classes to the wealthy (see #1);
- The destruction of common-sense regulations on big business;
- And the effective destruction of public education, as education.
You can’t get a college degree, without paying through the nose (the rich) or taking on a crushing burden of debt (the middle and working classes). And the poor are simply unprepared for high-school, let alone college — and they mostly can’t get a loan, anyway.
We find ourselves swamped in Trump, his ilk, and their followers, because folks simply don’t know any better. The man never had any ability other than grifting, and he still does not.
And when the world overwhelms you, you just want somebody who says they will protect you — and the authoritarians are always happy to fill that wish.
I wonder if folks in the US are going to wake up before or after the fascist takeover.
When trump first ran, i was debating on voting for him. Not because of his policies, not because of his personality, but mainly because i was mad at politicians. Trump is an outsider to these people, he is someone who didn’t grow up with a political background and wasn’t even into them until recently.
Due to the policies politicians make that seem very much to benefit themselves and their benefactors, i can understand the appeal.
However those same people that latched on, became absolutely staunch supporters, because they liked how he talks. Remember Jim Jones had over 3,000 members at his cult, and those belief’s were more fantastical than Trumps ramblings.
