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Notes -
Scott, "Planet-Sized Nutshell":
In a sense it's both. The reason Trump is that way is because he's Trump. Why is Trump POTUS, though, rather than losing the Republican nomination back in 2016? Well, because all the sensemaking institutions said "Don't nominate Trump" and the Republican base treated that as an endorsement. "Be a huckster" was no longer a losing strategy to get the Republican nomination, because the Republican base no longer trusted the institutions that normally filtered out hucksters, because those institutions by then also filtered out anyone loyal to the Red Tribe; indeed, the base went so far as to anti-trust the institutions and deliberately do the opposite of what they said.
Well, as they say, reversed stupidity isn't intelligence.
It's just, it's probably not going to be stupid in the exact same way as the existing stupidity that it's trying to reverse. And a plurality of voters might see that as a good enough option to try out compared to the existing stupidity. This is roughly how I perceive most Trump supporters, especially the subgroup that was behind the shift of, I think, literally every single one of the 50 states shifting towards Trump in the 2024 election compared to the 2020 one.
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