That is what makes me lose faith in democracy. At least the way we practice it, without any requirements for education.

Starship Troopers had an interesting idea where citizenship required military service prior to allowing you to vote - it was fair bc it was applied to everyone equally, though e.g. rich people could educate their kids earlier and they would get cushy spots ofc.

But without some kind of basic education requirement... I don't see how we can survive the double whammy of both capitalism (where e.g. our news media tells us what is profitable to say, not what is factual) and now facing the age of not merely misinformation (easily cured by like a 5-minute video on a subject) but campaigns of active disinformation (for which there is no readily available cure that I am aware of, beyond a preemptive vaccine of knowledge).

Well, whatever happens will be what happens, I suppose. And after that... we'll see how it goes.

That is one component.

Not being able to connect the things happening irl with the specific policies that Trump implemented to directly cause them is another. e.g. he deregulated train safety, then we saw a bunch of train derailments occur, both still under Trump and some later under Biden. Trump basically defunded those specific police, then we FAAFO.

Another is that when you are surrounded by people who say the same thing (as one another), some people go with that "authority" over what they see with their very own eyes. So they trust the Joe Rogan podcast over their own analysis - e.g. MANY federal crimes is bad, but if podcast says so then it must be "the system" that is bad (which heavily ironically... it is!) rather than Trump. Normalization of Fox News did so much bad, especially allowing it to call itself the label "news".

We did not get to our current state of affairs overnight, and we will not be able to dig ourselves out of this quickly and easily. Ironically, they get that, and despite him being a racist personally, they are willing to overlook if he would make things better. The other side has to get its message across that it will do more to help the common (black) man & woman than Trump would, and did.