People treated the elections like a joke. Having relatives living in USA for decades, by no means i see US elections as more than a charade in which everything is very big very loud very kitsch very melodramatic - essentially very American, if there are people out there who are worried about Trump getting elected they can blame the positive and negative media attention he have gotten for 2 years; afterall there is no good or bad advertisement, just advertisement.
From SNL invitation to Time magazine cover, everything was approval of him. This is exposure and exposure makes one reach more people.
Trump indeed has an appeal for traditional, working class white Americans also referred as "rednecks", though there are derivations from this pattern this seems to be general picture. Autocratic figures can take some love from the low-income ethnic/religious majority. I do not want to get into this but i can say Trump-like figures are some sort of self-inserts. Ofc the voterbase is not a hivemind but i am speaking generally.
Major problem is in US progress can be rapid, but on the flipside so as the regression. For example 9/11's shock gave a public approval to invasion of Iraq (or atleast had a neglectable reaction when it mattered) but mere 15 years later this intervention is not approved by society at the large scale. It was so present that Jeb Bush got ridiculed and bullied out of election with little to no popularity, don't tell me it is not because of his brother's infamous administration. George get elected 2 decades ago, same voters who were present in that election will vote in this one too.
In the end this charade-like, short term memory nature of the politics gave birth to this result: choosing between the war criminal and future even possibly bigger war criminal. Oh well, atleast after Brexit and US elections maybe Westerns stop blaming and ridiculing other countries as autocratic shitholes due to their "societies" choices.
