Trump is as much a product of the divisiveness as a cause. People initially took a shine to him because he was a "fighter". They saw a conflict already and wanted a fully willing combatant as a surrogate.
A couple weeks before the 2016 election Michael Moore (who I’m typically not big a fan of) had one of the best reads on why Trump would and ultimately did win that election.
I've been politically homeless for a while now but still registered Republican as is almost all of my family. Moore's points directly map to my conversations with them better than any other explanation I've seen on the Internet.:
I think it's important to keep in mind that Trump winning the primaries in 2016 was essentially a repudiation of the entire Republican incumbency by a good portion of their base.
Just about every general "reason Trump would win" for last election looks pretty dumb with this election.
Because basically all those arguments remain true - yet Trump didn't win. These aren't argument for why Trump would win. They were arguments for why Trump has some purchase. The reason Trump won was the elites go so sloppy they let him win, they let their garbage boogieman alternative become the choice because they were addicted to having that kind of creep as their opposition.
And Michael Moore's argument in particular is crap among these. Homeless factory workers aren't Trump's base, family construction companies are his base - I see them regularly. The well-off but not college educated.
My pet theory is similar, but slightly more nuanced, and comes from my history of being harshly bullied in middle school.
The group dynamics of bullying are pretty straightforward. There will always be bullies at the top who want to cement their status by showing their power as a bully. To get a significant group of people to go along with the bullying, however, (think everyone laughing along when the bully makes fun of someone) that group needs to be really unsure of their place in the social hierarchy. They know bullying is wrong but at that point are somewhat terrified of ending up on the wrong side of the bullying. That's why you see so much bullying in middle school, where kids are usually just starting to find their place in the social hierarchy.
I think in the US (and many Western democracies) there is currently so much unease about economics, about finding a good, and more importantly, stable job, that the situation is ripe for a bully to come along and take advantage of people's general worries about their place in the world to think "better for me to be a bully myself than to be the person that ends up on the bottom of the totem pole". Think of the crowd laughing along when Trump mocked a reporter with cerebral palsy.
When you couple this with large, structural racial changes in the US, it's not hard to see how Trump was able to take advantage.
Precisely. Fortunately, it appears most of the country is ready to move on and accept Biden as President. My friends and family who are conservative are happy it’s over, and completely fine with the results. As cliche as it is, they accept that the people have spoken. The majesty of democratic voting and peaceful transfer of power is something beautiful to behold.
Hopefully Trump can accept the results sooner rather than later. His instinct to fight at all costs is not serving him well in this situation. Fortunately, it’s futile. As someone said in one of the debates, it’s not up to him whether he gets to stay, it’s up to us.
I hope the the next 4 years are more unified than the last 4.
You could be right, but I'm not really seeing a lot of evidence that "most of the country is ready to move on and accept Biden as President." Not seeing a lot of those Trump rally-goers suddenly deciding that Biden is OK. In fact what I see is a lot of Trump supporters outraged about what they believe is shaping up to be a stolen election. And a lot of comments to the effect that Trump is not Nixon (1960).
I know too many of those people in my personal life to believe that they are a tiny minority. Trump has built himself an effective cult following. People turn off their brains in order to follow him and start to believe most of what he says. They'll say that they understand that he's a liar, bu then still believe the lies. It's frustrating to watch it happen.
