I'm still in shock over how Trump actually managed to get into power. To me, it's still unclear why so many actually voted for him (it woke me up as to how a large percentage of the American electorate actually thinks, and for me that's a worry).
You're right, the chaos Trump's created has seen a paradigm shift in the way politics is carried out everywhere, and that's likely not a bad thing. Often things need to get worse before a wake-up call turns them around for the better. We'll wait and see.
Trump's initial success, the lemming-like addiction to smartphones/Facebook mania, and the swathes and swathes of crazy, mad and irresponsible behaviour I've seen over the last seven or eight months in response to COVID-19 has truly shaken my view of humanity. I used to think we humans were smarter than we actually are.
> To me, it's still unclear why so many actually voted for him
Voting in the US, especially in general elections, is mostly about tribal identity, which explains a lot of that part of Trump's election, and he was largely a political unknown who's campaign was ambiguous enough that people could read what they want into it (By 2020, that last part was no longer true, obviously.) In the 2016 primary, he had the ambiguity factor, celebrity, the Republican establishment having trouble figuring out what he was doing, and a Republican Primary system designed to turn early pluralities into commanding delegate leads to avoid long primary fights which backfired spectacularly for the establishment.
In 2016 I put the result down to the general disenchantment in many democratic countries with democracy generally - similar to the 'logic' behind brexit.
That I can understand but it's the relative closeness of the vote in this election that surprised me.
Earlier I was looking at a live online polling update with maps of both state and popular vote figures. The popular vote map was detailed enough for me to drill down to county level and finer. In states like Ohio, N Dakota and Nebraska with sparce populations and high overall Republican vote one would occasionally (but not infrequently) come across small settlements of 500/1000 or so only 20/50 miles apart where the vote in one was say D-70%, R-28%, Lib-2% and the other almost exactly the opposite with Lib remaining the same at about 2%.
This seems to backup your tribal identity point very well. Given that these settlements likely have only trees or farmland between them the figures are actually quite startling. I took into account that some may have been Native American reservations (which I've not yet ruled out), so I resampled in other states with low populations such as Vermont and New Hampshire and found similar instances (of course, with these latter instances the overall state figures had the Democrats in the majority).
These demographics are fascinating to say the least and I'm going to revisit them again shortly.
Trump got into power because he was hailed as a genius business person who would transform the country like a good business person would transform a failing company.
People bought into it, because he's probably the most exposed businessman in America - through his brand name, and media appearances.
Furthermore, he was "hard" on certain populist topics like immigration, as well as conservative on more mainstream topics, like taxes, foreign affairs, etc.
And on the very top of that, the fringes of democratic voters didn't bond with Hilary Clinton getting ushered in as the presidential candidate.
I'm still in shock over how Trump actually managed to get into power. To me, it's still unclear why so many actually voted for him (it woke me up as to how a large percentage of the American electorate actually thinks, and for me that's a worry).
You're right, the chaos Trump's created has seen a paradigm shift in the way politics is carried out everywhere, and that's likely not a bad thing. Often things need to get worse before a wake-up call turns them around for the better. We'll wait and see.
Trump's initial success, the lemming-like addiction to smartphones/Facebook mania, and the swathes and swathes of crazy, mad and irresponsible behaviour I've seen over the last seven or eight months in response to COVID-19 has truly shaken my view of humanity. I used to think we humans were smarter than we actually are.