Trump glided through the Republican Primary, and he didn’t face a real challenger. Haley won a couple contests but, Trump never felt the pressure at all. All of this despite 4 felony cases, being found liable for sexual assault and defamation, being proven in court to be a financial fraud, losing and then trying to steal the 2020 election, and flirting with dictatorship the entire way. Yet, he remains the odds on favorite to win the Presidency this November.
He’s openly telling you he will become a dictator, or try to, and a majority of the country prefers that to Democratic governance.
What does this say about the country?
I mean, there's a lot.
I voted for "Liberal Lies" because the way that the Left has used accusations immunized Trump to left-wing criticism. When the same people who claimed that Mitt Romney (!) was a racist would-be-crypto-Hitler said that stuff about Trump.... well, that meant your average republican could ignore claims about Trump's (actual) fascist tendencies, because "
that's just what they say about any Republican who they are afraid might win".
I also voted for both parties failing America, because both parties have sunk deeply into negative partisanship and an unwillingness to treat Americans like adults (to be fair, this is also because many Americans do not want to act like or be treated like Adults). The corruption of each excuses, in the partisans, worse corruption in the other. The ability to say "But Hillary"....
and not be wrong in 2016 was a powerful enabler for Trump. Similarly, the ability to say "But Biden" is Trump's strongest argument in 2024 (the same is true in reverse - Trump is the strongest argument Democrats have for their own candidates, which is also sad).
Partisan media silos encourage this by nut-picking the other side, making their own viewers / listeners / readers angry and afraid of the other side, who they are told is crazy, and hates them. They get a vote, and, I hope every. single. legitimate. defamation lawsuit against such an entity (similar to what we saw against FOX and other right wing media organizations following their post-2020 election behavior) continues to cost them incredibly painful amounts. Trump's abuses are massaged, explained, or even ignored by partisan media hacks who first terrify and then are in turn terrified of their audiences refusing to listen to anyone who doesn't tell them what they want to hear (see above point about Americans not being interested in being adults).
As a result.... the GOP has indeed been turned from a "conservative" (to the extent that it ever was) party into an authoritarian right-wing one, and, probably most of it's own voters don't even realize it. They probably still think they are conservative. But,
because you can't question the team in zero sum partisanship, no one in their own ecosystem can tell them and be considered legitimate. That's a huge win for Trump, because it makes his authoritarian preferences and personality simpatico with the base. The more the base gets told that the value is tribal loyalty (and that "winning" is therefore, not "policy advancements" but "hurting the other tribe"), the more he can get away with actions and claims that would have been anathema to anyone who pretended to care about the Constitution 15 years ago.
and there's a LOT more. Both parties utterly refused to take illegal immigration as a serious problem, and helped provoke a populist revolt, which he rode. Boomers are a net destructive presence in American politics. The party's have become too weak to protect themselves. Americans are less religious.
etc., so on, and so forth.
