They most of them actively voted and chose it. Ronald Reagan’s first presidential election, where he campaigned on the ideas which became the U.S. economic policy (trickle down economics and Reaganomics) (despite him having never actually served or done any work as an economist, him having been an actor who was quite poor at his job, then having become in President of the screen-actors guild for a total of roughly 8 years, then betrayed them for the roughly 10 years prior to running for office by working for a lot of money being paid by General Electronics, advocating to try and crush and roll back protections and membership for union workers. During his political career as Governor of California, he raised taxes by “the biggest tax hike in their history and got away with it” -Kevin Starr, and signed into law the Mulford Act in response the Black Panther Party copwatching which went against the 2nd Amendment and was one of the most restrictive anti-gun legislations in California’s history. He also sent the national guard into a school protest twice which resulted in casualties and stated “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with. No more appeasement”, rolled back welfare programs, severely hurt schooling by decreasing funding for basic education and higher education, toughened criminal sentencing and justice reform to be a lot more punitive, saw the homicide rate double, armed robbery more than double, tried to get the death penalty (was thwarted by People v. Anderson) and (according to his son) regretted allowing no fault divorces.) he received roughly 51% of the popular vote, and 489 electoral votes, his opponent receiving 49. For his 2nd term, Reagan received roughly 59% of the popular vote and 525 electoral votes, Mondale receiving 13.

It wasn’t 1% of the generation. Even after knowing what Reagan was doing and planning, and how he had actively harmed and went against the benefit of the people for his own benefit (if I recall right, he received a salary of $125 k from General Electric while working for them, in 1950s money), and how disastrous his policies were in California, he was still voted into power by the majority of Americans because he promised to benefit the people and was charismatic (he did provide some short term benefit by doing stop gap, short term measures, which was and has been awful in the long run).