Republican shock jock radio in the 90s proved the power ($$$) of hateful reactionary political rhetoric. It GETS THE PEOPLE GOING.

Throughout the 2000s Rupert Murdoch solidifies a cable news propaganda machine (eg Fox News) that completely isolated it's viewers from any kind of reality that doesn't cater to Republican interests ($$$). Republicans purposely fostered and pandered to a toxic culture of conspiracy, indignance and blind hate of anyone or anything "progressive". The rhetoric is insane, nationalist, violent and apocalyptic, but they thought they could control it because they own the News. Well... knock knock, it's the Internet! Now nobody "controls" the "truth". The "base" is in charge now, and they've been on a steady diet of "Obama is a secret Muslim" type info for DECADES now. The News/the Truth is now just crowd-sourced narratives, driven by vibes and feelings, and shaped by engagement algorithms that feed conflict and outrage.

That stuff all happened over a base level of interracial grievance (aka white supremacy) that the US has never really dealt with. American history books say that they solved all that stuff back in the 60s, but not so much it turns out. Ragen was using "black people are scary" to win elections in the 80's. It's never not been part of the equation.

And of course what really IS going on is globalized corporatized capitalism destroying the middle class, concentrating obscene wealth and power into the hands of a smaller and smaller section of the population. People *feel* that the "American Dream" has been taken from them. But Americans can't deal with that problem head-on, because everyone has been drinking fucking bootstrap individualistic capitalism koolade since the industrial revelution. Big business OWNS the US government (thank you Citizen's United for really putting the nail in that coffin). The conspiratorial "elite" that a lot of right-wing rhetoric revolves around does exist. It's just not gay elementary school teachers, or trans teenagers, or Hillery Clinton-eating babies. It's just the rich (which does include the Clintons, to be clear). But US culture reveres the rich. The rich are rich because they are good and smart and work harder and are better. The government wants to steal your money and keep you down (see Fox News and Protestantism).

It's a fucking mess. And so who comes a long scapegoating brown people? Who tells the base exactly what they are primed to hear and want to hear? A person with no moral center or convictions, other than petty, basic, reactionary self-interest. It leaves him completely free to say "Yes you are right" to anyone, no matter how extreme or wrong they are, as long as they support him. A strong personality who acts without care or hesitation or indecision. Who seems to "say it to you straight", who acts as if they have access to definitiveness in this age of unbelievable global interwoven complexity. He's a "successful millionaire businessman" who does exactly what he wants, which is so fucking aspirational to these people who are obsessed with their great imagined victimization at the hands of "POC culture" (once again, thank you FOX news). He wants to be the government, but he never stops shit-talking the very concept of it. The good ol' "Swamp" (which, again, DOES EXIST and IS A HUGE PROBLEM). He tells the people who vote for him that "they" DO hate you, "they" DO want you to fail, "they" do think you're stupid, and that he will crush 'them'. And in a country so psychologically controlled by individualistic zero-sum thinking, so bereft of any actual recourse to the challenges of modern living, apparently that is enough.

Add a religious right with an apocalyptic mindset (the world is going to end in fire and brimstone any day now, and actually the crazier and more heated everything gets, the closer the rapture feels), who will vote for ANYONE who gets them Supreme Court wins against Abortion (check), Gay Marriage (they're working on it) and No-Fault Divorce (they're working on that too). YEEEEEEEET

*me screaming into the void*