Allow me to amend, or at least explain, one point. Many of them are blind, as you say, but it is because they have willfully blinded themselves. You see it in the MAGAhat rationalizations: "He didn't mean it." "That's just the way he speaks." "Take him seriously but not literally."
Trump has offered them their choice of 1954, 1910, or 1855. His base of support is overwhelmingly White and disproportionately male. A master of TV imaging, Trump offers them Happy Days, Gunsmoke, or Daniel Boone. Not the reality of those years, but the fiction of stalwart men, supportive and uncomplaining women, and non-Whites who are generally completely invisible, or where visible are happily subservient or are subhuman enemies they can slaughter without remorse.
It should be no surprise. From patent medicines to land in Florida (or the west) to big-dick pills, scams generally succeed, depending on your definition of success.
As far as democracy in America goes, we currently have a choice between center-to-center-right, or batshit crazy posing as far-right. When one votes, one should vote for the general tenor or message of the party.
Democratic governance? Never existed, except in a few small towns in New England. Governance is performed by the politicians, and executed by the professionals (who are generally as close to truly neutral as humans can be). It's a good system, compared to everything else (Churchill's famous dictum: Democracy is the worst form of government on Earth, except for everything else).
You see it on this board, left and right. People latch onto one idea that will make everything better forever. But it simply doesn't work that way. Governance, and particularly democracy, are like owning a house or a 60s-model car. They require constant maintenance perpetual tinkering to work at all.
So it's left to those who take it seriously and put in the effort, with the check of having to report back every two or four or six years for an up-or-down vote. And the reason lying your ass off has become the most successful method for winning or surviving the up-or-down vote is the same reason hoi polloi, bless their ignorant, hateful, fear-filled hearts, will periodically buy Dr. Marvel's Magic Elixir (or hydroxychloroquine) or beachfront property in Florida or pills that will make your dick the size of your arm: because they're ignorant, fearful, and lack self-awareness.
At least everybody gets a say in a democracy. Not much of a say, mind, but something.
Trump is the closest thing we've had to a dictator since Andrew Jackson. But the system so far has been resilient enough that Trump, like Jackson, will leave when his time is over. Or maybe not. It may take guns to get him out. It wouldn't be the first time American democracy has needed the sharp correction of violence. No country in history has been immune.
If so, those guns will not be solely in the hands of slobbering MAGAhats.
I can hear you saying "But it's not right!" Don't bother. I can only give you Galileo's response to the Inquisition. . . "Yet it moves."
