Yeah, it says they sowed the wind and now they’re reaping the fucking whirlwind.
The Republican base didn’t just become crazy all by itself. It became crazy because Republicans found it convenient and politically beneficial to make them crazy, to endorse the crazy and validate it and feed into it and off it.
It’s like the assistant director of an insane asylum, let’s call him, oh, say, Dr. Gingrich, who decided to supplant the head of the place by enlisting the support of the inmates. Yeah, sure, it’s outré. Okay, yeah, it’s transgressive and entails smashing boundaries a lot of people thought were really important. But hey, it could totally work, and that’s what matters, eh?
So he withheld their meds and talked them into a belief that the administration was trying to poison them (which was pretty easy, not surprisingly), and next thing you know, Dr. Michel is fleeing for his life and Dr. Gingrich is in his office. But, being a doctor, he’s confident he can keep them all under control, and under his control. And when he fell, one after another, the later occupants of the hospital administration, many of whom began to resemble their patients because those were the only people with whom they had regular contact, decided it was to their advantage to keep the inmates unmedicated and riled up rather than trying to get them back in touch with reality.
And, next thing you know, there comes the day when the inmates want to start appointing people to the staff themselves. And the administrators say, hey, let them have a token position or two. A doctor, a nurse, an orderly. What could go wrong? We’ll still be in control. But then they appointed another and another and another, and before you know it, the whole staff of the hospital consists of the stupid, the mad and the frightened who feign madness and stupidity out of fear.
They built this. Trump isn’t a freak, he was the inevitable outcome of a system where insanity was rewarded and knowledge was punished, and all the while elites who were terrified of their base nonetheless continued to smirk at them and fondly imagine they had them under control.