Citizens United was the point of no return. The people became powerless wage slaves with a mouse whisper voice to influence anything. Corporotacracy achieved adulthood and the people's slide toward slavery crossed the event horizon.

Yes, I remember as a kid Carter getting elected. Didn't understand the politics at the time, but he seemed a nice guy.

You know what is really interesting to watch? Look up old TV political debates from the 60s and 70s. Where they actually debated issues. It's amazing.

You can't realize something that isn't true. If you can't fire them, they don't work for you.

After collapse they will again, not they'll never mean it

No. I do however remember questioning people's sanity when they talked about stupid and incompetent politicians when it was very obvious that they were corrupt but knew very well what they were doing.

Decades later not much has changed. The malicious working against voters has become even more obvious and people still pretend that those corrupt shitbags are mostly just dumb and don't know any better.

And when he says: "Because of what's happened", he means "When I bombed a school full of small girls. Twice."

He just never says which people.

All that while you could probaby call each of them by name in under a minute...

I hope you're right about people leaving him, but after everything he's done and/or enabled, if these people haven't left his circles yet, I fear they never will. He's basically given them a pass to go mask off. Not only enabling, but encouraging their bad behavior. I don't see them letting go of their "savior".

Fool me once, shame on you (and me, I obviously should have known better). Fool me twice, shame on me even harder because I'm obviously a dumbass. Fool me thrice, I'm a pedoloving brain damaged trump sucker who can't be helped and am responsible for wrecking this nation but damn those libs who actually do care about me as a person are so owned!

“The survey also found 63% of the public is pessimistic about the current state of the economy, including 35% of Republicans, a six-point point increase from July and the highest percentage of Republicans with negative views about the economy during either of Trump’s terms.”

2/3 of Republicans think he’s doing fine.

Problem is he said "You'll never have to vote again" and I think he meant it.

But his pants says he does give a shit!

There are two main things that change people's minds: Peer pressure, and trauma.

We're social creatures and we take cues from people we trust. The right wing has done an excellent (and horrifying) job of creating unified in-groups for their followers. They have fox news. They have talk radio. They have churches. They have also demonized their opposition - "ivory tower elites", "coastal elites", queers, commies, etc. Many people will struggle to change their mind when everyone around them hasn't.

There was a thing I was reading about a while ago, about flat-earthers. A bunch of them got shown a lot of evidence to contradict their beliefs. They all stuck to their flat-earth nonsense, except one of them. The guy who'd started dating someone sane, and hanging out with her friends. He changed his mind. In large part because he no longer saw the flat-earth community as such a vital part of his in-group. Or so the author argued.

The other way is trauma. If something really horrific happens to someone, they might reevaluate. But if they're still in the same social groups, they're likely to fall back into their old ways.

In the book "Dying of Whiteness", the author interviewed a variety of people. Among them were gun violence survivors. There was one passage where a woman said something like, yeah, easy access to guns is why her son died. Maybe he shouldn't have been able to just go get a gun and shoot himself. But, she said, she would never say that to her peers.

So, in short: No, not really. The social groups carrying maga identity are self-reinforcing. They're all looking at their peers, who are all still maga.

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe is a good comic about some of the same ideas, too.

He actually has a very low approval rating now.

https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-silver-bulletin

According to the New York Times, Trump has the second lowest approval rating heading into the midterms since 1946, behind only Harry Truman.

I'd say maybe steal their money straight from their pockets, shoot their kid dead, and hacksaw their pet to pieces.

I hope no one reads that top-down and comes away with "Don't vote. Delay today". That'd be a silly way to read it.