@anthony in regards to your question, I think 9/11 was a huge turning point for the U.S. Confirmation of previous conspiracies were confirmed such as the declassification of MK Ultra and and Compensation for for the Marshell islands victims and other nuclear testing were fresh in people minds, which paved the way for legit conspiracy theory's and wack job theories on 9/11. The we went into Iraq under false pretenses. During that time inflation skyrocketed. While gasoline has always been cheap compared to other other countries, we watched the prices triple over night. This incited a lot of rage and distrust of our current system and a fostered a belief that we got away from what the founding fathers intended.
During the great recession Americans learned that many long held beliefs were only myths. We were taught that our homes were the one investment we could count on as they would only appreciate in value, so we bought big homes. We were taught education would guarantee us good jobs. Hard work would guarantee us a comfortable lifestyle. Then everyone started losing their homes and jobs. We were scared. We had been taught that is nothing else you could always get a job flipping burgers, but then McDonald's had their big hiring day and millions turned out to apply for jobs, many of those people had degrees, PHD's representing disproportionate number of job seeks. There were only a few thousand positions available nation wide which blew that myth out of the water and we were left standing there with nothing to say but WHAT THE f*ck!? The as if to rub our noses in the fact that the middle class could no longer find work or afford the rising food costs, the banks got massive bailouts.
This spawned a lot of grass roots movements such as the Tea Party movement and Occupy Wall street. Around the same time Obama was campaigning on Change, (To be honest though, he just never exactly clarified how that change would come about outside of healthcare reform.)
We had always been taught that Protests were the way for the average American citizen to get things done and was a right afforded to us as citizens. But now, we were bombarded by stories of innocent protesters being viciously and unfairly attacked by swat teams and the Libertarian Tea Party movement was hijacked by the Republican party and the Occupy movement was labeled as a liberal movement by the media. (I assure you, that it did not start out that way even if it did attract a more liberal crowed) The Occupy movement was huge. The protests were massive, but the only thing it accomplished was that the average citizen learned we didn't have as much power or say as we thought we did. We also learned that the media wasn't to be trusted.
We were stuck in a two party paradigm.
Eventually, under Obama things did improve but we still felt resentful about the fact that the wars in the middle east continued and that the patriot act was renewed, two things Obama campaigned against, yet did anyways. So we were fed up with the status quo.
Americans were angry at the current system, but the thing is, while we retained the emotional memory of what had occurred over the last several years, we seemed to forget the facts. That is what I noticed of people anyways. People seemed to forget why they were angry and why the longed for change in the system.
Fast forward to the the primaries. The democrat nominees were Bernie Sanders and Hillery Clinton. People saw Hillary as a war monger and while The Bernie Sanders seemed to be the favorite, few people voted for him because they feared he could beat a republican in the actual election. On the other hand the republicans seemed to gather all of their party rejects to run in the primaries. Then there was Trump, Someone who wasn't apart of the system that failed us, and people weren't thinking about what a buffoon he was, just that he wasn't "one of THEM."
So basically, 1. They retained the emotional memory and the anger of the previous decade without remembering why they felt that way and 2. they were so desperate for anything different they didn't care what different meant, because they forgot what the different they wanted would look like.
*forgot to add, that what people previously imagined different would look like, would be getting big business out of government. It's so sad it is funny.
