Elections matter, but they can't fix a nation of people who have gone mad.

[shockey80]

Let's be honest, The American people elected someone who was clearly corrupt and insane. Trump showed us who he was during the campaign. He did not hide the fact he was corrupt or crazy. 60 million Americans voted for him. There are millions more Americans who live in a bubble of apathy and ignorance. You could set off a bomb next to them and they would say, "what was that."

These same Americans worship propaganda and rage against the truth and reality. They live in fantasy world. That is more than enough people to wreck a great nation from within.

These Americans follow a government run propaganda news organization. How can we ever fix America with Fox News in existence?

We do not have the ability to fix our healthcare system. We just make it worse. An election cannot fix that. Obama proved it. He tried to fix it and the American people became crazier. If we take back the Whitehouse and congress in 2020, Can you imagine what the Republicans and their voters will do when we try to pass Medicare for All. They will go fucking nuts.

We can't fix immigration, our madness gets in the way,

We can't fix gun violence, our madness gets in the way. There is a movement in our country to arm teachers. That is the definition of madness. A country that has to arm everybody, including teachers, is a country that will give up on freedom. It is a country that is doomed.

I guess the questions we all should be asking is, How do you fix madness? Can madness be fixed? Does madness continue until it destroys itself.

I am 100% convinced the American people are suffering from the same madness that affected the German people in the 30s. Good luck everyone.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Realistically, though, that's not all of us. It's not even a majority.

These days his really hard-core base is probably a good deal less than the 38% or so that polls show approve of him. And they've always been here; it's just that they finally found a candidate who reflected their attitudes. Trump is going down. The hard core will stick with him to the end, just like Nixon's base of about 23% stuck with him throughout and after Watergate. This included my great aunt, who kept a famed picture of him on her living room wall. My Republican parents, however, were strangely silent and I don't think they ever spoke of Nixon or Watergate again. So the funny thing was, after Nixon resigned it was almost impossible to find someone who'd admit to having voted for him - even though he won the '72 election by a huge margin (waaaay more than Trump). I think the same thing will happen after Trump is gone. There will be a small remaining percentage of hopeless MAGAts and a whole lot of people who'll pretend they never liked him.

[shockey80]

5. I hear you, but there is one big difference.

The Trump voters are under the complete control of propaganda. There was no Fox News back then. The Republican party did not spend 24 hours a day, 7 days a week lying to their voters. What we are watching is new , historic, and very dangerous.

[wasupaloopa]

2. No the "American Prople" did not elect trump. Most

voted for Hillary.

We are all not crazy trumpsters

[MarvinGardens]

3. We can't fix crazy but we can deny them power

by consistently, persistently, out-voting them. The crazy people you correctly describe have been around my whole life, and probably longer. Some of them have been my family, coworkers, and other acquaintances. Fox just repeatedly told them what they wanted to hear, and Trump gave them a fellow crazy to unite behind. Most will never be convinced that Trump is bad for the nation, but that is nothing new. Most would never have been convinced that Obama was good and benevolent toward the nation.

[pecosbob]

4. My only quibble is that you really can't call it 'a government run propaganda news organization'

2008-2016 showed us this...it just happens to be in synch with the current administration.

[ooky]

6. It will be with us until the vast majority of people reject the propaganda.

So the answer lies in how you get people to reject it.

[Garrett78]

7. I'd say around a quarter of the voting-age population in the US is, essentially, crazy.

I'm, of course, not saying that they're clinically insane, but tens of millions of American adults hold beliefs that are beyond outrageous. And they raise their kids to hold those same beliefs. They exist within an alternate reality. Presenting facts, studies show, will only backfire and cause false beliefs to become even more ingrained.

In a tyranny of the minority system like ours, that's a very serious problem. Between that and climate change, we may face an existential crisis. And, quite frankly, Democrats need to be much more blunt and open about this. Resist any urge to base a campaign on winning over Trump supporters, as that's a fool's errand. And there should be a big push for making media literacy (check and verify sources, think critically, etc.) mandatory curriculum in every school.

Plus, a plurality of the voting-age population doesn't vote at all, as you alluded to in the OP--by which I mean there were more non-voters than there were people who voted for Clinton or who voted for Trump. In mid-term elections, that's especially true. Turning out the base is most critical, but the Democratic Party can also invest more in reaching out to those who are disengaged.

Now, if we could magically wake up tomorrow in a world free of racism and sexism, the Republican Party (as a national institution) wouldn't survive. But that's not going to happen, of course. People aren't voting for Republicans because of trade and taxes, or health care policy, or environmental policy, and so on. Exit polls may suggest that they are, but that's because they aren't given the option of choosing "because I'm a racist and sexist asshole"--and hardly anyone would choose that option anyway. When the average Republican voter says he or she voted based on economic policy, that person really just means they don't want "those people" to have a social safety net or equal opportunity. If they themselves are on welfare of any kind, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation. When they say they voted based on health care policy, they mean they want the government to keep its grubby paws off of their Medicare or Medicaid or ACA and that "those people" shouldn't get their Obamacare handout. They take clean air and water for granted, while being just fine with toxic waste being dumped in urban areas.

And rural America (not that there aren't many who subscribe to crazy beliefs living in suburban and urban areas) is very isolated. I read a startling statistic many years ago about how some huge percentage (over 50%, I think) of those who grow up in very small and rural towns will never travel outside of a 50-mile radius of said town (college not being affordable doesn't help). But, hey, as long as they have Faux Noise and right wing radio, they know what's going on in the world.

[shockey80]

9. I agree.

[lancelyons]

8. Either they get their way or we get our way

It’s either they fuk us or we screw them. I don’t have a problem with every trump supporter that pushes fake bs having difficult times in their life. The gop and their supporters should pay the price for turning on the USA democracy.