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I made an appearance to the social event. No one said I had to be conscious.
It’s really a chicken and egg question. Republicans vote for Republican leaders. Why? Well, largely because they are uninformed about how bad those leaders are for everyone. Why are they uninformed? Republican leaders have savagely gutted both the media and education system, ensuring the average American remains uninformed. Therefore uninformed Americans vote Republican against their own interest because the Republicans are right there ready with the catcher’s mitt to receive the results of their investment - that being uneducated, underinformed Americans who are easily propagandized and who lack the tools or knowledge to read between the lines.
Couple this with regular statements that “the enemy” will try to lie to you, and you have all these people like clay in your hands. They’ll believe anything you tell them on the news, and disbelieve anything anyone else says merely on the grounds of “Fox News didn’t tell me that was true”. And that right there is your core Republican voting bloc. That’s 78 year old Auntie Mabel who doesn’t really know what all is going on but the TV tells her that Mr Trump will make the economy better. That’s also Jimbob Truknuttz who shoots 200 rounds of 22LR at a photo of Joe Biden every day because his TV and his friends have taught him that liberals are a threat to his way of life. Brad Dudeguy, 28 year old cis white male, thinks the gays and the transes are freaks because the news his parents watch present them as sexual terrorists every single night. Rico Chavez was born in Texas after his parents immigrated from Mexico, and they don’t have big opinions about politics, but everyone in his neighborhood has Trump signs up so he and his parents go with the crowd.
This is an entire class of people built and bred for the purpose of voting republican. They get their hooks in from literal birth, controlling not only the schooling and local media access of the child but also the availability, or rather lack thereof, of contraceptives for the parents, all but ensuring more children - ergo more republican voters down the line. It is a propaganda pipeline that would be actually impressive if not for its abject evil. If they put this amount of effort into actually educating their citizens properly we could be decades ahead of where we are currently.
But instead they maintain this repressive environment because it all but guarantees indoctrination of future voters. Those who don’t fit in will frequently move away to a different more like-minded area, or (perhaps more frequently, in some areas) will be killed by the locals, either police or gangs (biker or otherwise) or just regular old domestic violence - either way, dangerously open minded folks will be weeded out of the population naturally. What remains is a self reinforcing bubble of whatever you can feed these folks on the trusted evening “news”. This picture that I’ve painted encompasses wide swaths of rural America, mostly across the south and Midwest but definitely not limited to there.
I added a couple more paragraphs to your comment so it's easier to read. Peace.
Democrats cared more about preserving the First-past-the-post voting system then they did beating trump. They wanted easy elections with no one threatening the status quo.
The self proclaimed democracy defenders didn't level the playing field and give 3rd parties equal access to the electoral process.
Given their rhetoric, democrats understood what was at stake and still chose to not replace FPTP voting in states they controlled. Party over country till the bitter end.