This nation is addicted to "faith" and "belief". You can see it in the way they treat near-Pure Capitalism as a religion. America's populace never wants to hear any such Yur-uh-pean fowl-de-rowl nonsense about "happy mediums" between what we have and (in Thomas Friedman's assessment) North Korea. Oh, and (deity) help you if you point out Capitalism's glaring flaws and distribution problems visibly damaging the progress of millennials, workers, students and seniors.
They also wanted someone to tell them what they wanted to hear - that HE would be the one to save them and return their jobs to them. It never ceases to amaze me that people think Bernie Sanders is too big a risk, but Trump WASN'T. He was the Capitalist genius we all loved to hate, but now mysteriously believe in. Bernie's concrete plans on how he would pay for everything he proposed somehow seemed less reasonable than Trump's re-hashed Supply Side; a miserable and reliable failure that even their own Reagan-era promoters now decry. Search me how the hell that makes sense, but this is a nation of Fear, Belief and Faith.
Faith-based people will believe ANYthing you tell them, as long as it adheres to their prejudices against marginalized classes, biases against certain people having rights and progress, and their own shortcomings. THAT is how you get a dystopia.
There could be a serious argument made that "faith" and "belief" are the two elements that won Trump the Presidency. They always wanted to blame Obama for the problems Capitalism caused them and they found that guy in billionaire Donald Trump; a guy who has been screwing labor, tenants and businesses since his rich pop lent him a lottery. Just like they're wont to beat the shit out of anyone who questions their flag and Bible, they're willing to do the same to anyone who screws with their Horatio Alger fantasy.
What were they always told? "If you're not better than (insert race, ethnic group or marginalized class here), who are you better than, son?"
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