One reads that Trump has a new theory about Russian involvement in the November 2018 elections – he’s contending that the Russians plan to help the Democrats:
I’m very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election. Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!
Some of this may be trolling (what was once called getting a rise out of someone), but not all of it. Among Trump’s hardcore supporters, there are many who will likely accept this ludicrous claim, or at least repeat it endlessly. Some will adopt Trump’s absurdities from ignorance, but others because honesty and reasonableness will matter less to them than something else Trump offers (a narrow cultural or ethnic defense, for example).
A people so ignorant to accept a claim that the Russians want to help Democrats, or so motivated by something other than honesty and reasonableness, did not become weak-minded or unprincipled overnight.
It took years of effort advancing false political & economic claims, rationalizations, excuses, marketing plans, all-around boosterism, and other serial mendacities to create an audience receptive to Trumpism:
A bridge to nowhere, an ‘Innovation Center’ that’s a dull office building built on grants for another purpose (now used mostly for public-sector workers), a failed tax incremental district, an unused (now defunct) ‘innovation express’ bus line, crowing about taxpayer-funded state capitalism at the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, an unsound, but twice-proposed digester energy project, and flacking for mediocre & mendacious insiders: that’s not a fit legacy for a serious, competent policymaking. (A best business citizen designation from the WEDC is the state’s way of saying least-competent grasp of simple economics.)
These efforts and their ilk were those which paved the way toward our present weak and degraded condition. The last generation brought us here – a thirty years’ rot has led to a leaking, sinking boat.