Trump's election is a sign of serious dysfunction in American culture and society.

[lees1975]

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-fact-that-trump-was-elected-is-sign.html

The link will take you to an article (I think you can access without being a subscriber) that is an excerpt from Rick Wilson's book, Everything Trump Touches Dies. I look at reading things from the Lincoln Project as a test of one's understanding of true American idealism. If I read and watch these things, and find them resonating with my own thoughts, beliefs and values, gathered, incorporated and practiced over a lifetime, then I evaluate myself as being a patriotic, "mainstream, grass roots," American. I'd give myself a pretty high grade when it comes to my understanding of our identity, our roots, and the manner in which America, not perfect by any means, but still working on it, relates to the world.

But our political system has taken a very dangerous and wrong turn into a darkness and down into an abyss that is really bent on destroying everything this country has ever been, or aspires to be. The institutions which supported and undergirded American idealism have failed to protect and preserve the Constitutional democracy they were intended to protect. The electorate in a democracy must be educated and informed, and able to discern facts from lies. It must be seasoned with cultural institutions that have moral and ethical values at the core of their mission, purpose and practice. It must know, and be able to learn from the past mistakes in its own history, and what it knows must have an effect on who it elects to lead a republic.

But we elected Donald Trump.

Three paragraphs is not enough to describe Donald Trump's antisocial, dysfunctional, morally bankrupt absence of character. He's a pathological liar, a phony, a fraud, and completely dishonest and untrustworthy, with a lifelong set of examples to illustrate just how bad he is. We have elected some individuals to office, across the board and including the Presidency, whose ability to hide their true character and be deceitful to survive politically is a known part of history. But we have never elected an immoral, inhumane monster like Trump. We've come close, Nixon broke the mold as far as honesty and trust was concerned. But with Trump, it is hard to imagine how he could have been born, raised, and lived in this country and never have picked up and practices a single one of its virtues or values.

[J_William_Ryan]

1. "The electorate in a democracy must be educated and informed..."

Most are not.

Most are frightened, stupid, and willfully ignorant – those who voted for Trump.

[lees1975]

2. Project 2025 is built on the premise that people will choose willful ignorance

and have learned nothing from their own history. Those who do know it, recognize Project 2025 for what it is right away. The basic philosophy behind it depends on the built-in anti-education bias of virtually all of conservative Evangelicalism. Being informed means rejecting their religious superstition.