Am USer. I have no explanation, but I can assure you that being up close to this shit doesn’t help it make any more sense. I come from a conservative white family in a mostly white area, and sure I can see how people get into that insular world and are conditioned to reject rational inquiry, but at the same time we live in the information age, people!

The US is very dysfunctional for anyone but the upper middle class. We all see our taxes taken out of our check, and the services provided to us are very limited: no working healthcare system, limited affordable housing, abusive elder care industry, few social safety nets, student debt & cost of education, etc.

One party (Republicans) is convinced the government is broken (it has lots of problems) and their solution is to... break it more. They throw a lot of red meat to their voters (hatred toward minorities, LGBTQ+) to keep them energized and distracted. They also seem to be literal fascists lately, and are breaking our voting systems through pushing misinformation to make people distrust our institutions.

The other party (Democrats) ignores their progressive supporters and pushes milquetoast half-meassures to solve problems. They are weak, inept. However, they aren't interested in literally erasing LGBTQ+ people or marginalizing racial minorities. Nor are they interested in breaking our democratic processes.

Corporate-owned media has been pouring gasoline on this trash fire the whole time. I hate people who do this whole "both sides" shtick (Because the parties are not the same, it's fascism vs a party that still seems to believe in democracy), but that's what I think of when I see things like this . This is an article about how right wing talking heads are pushing some conspiracy about Taylor Swift and the Super Bowl, and it appeals to that part of my brain who wants to laugh at dumb people who disagree with me. But I have to point out, nobody actually cares.

People are lonely and bored and are making how they vote into rooting for some sort of sports team. You can see it in the replies to your post: someone called the right wing a "cult". I'd like to say there is some grand conspiracy where corporations are dividing the working class but the truth is probably far more bland: Rage gets clicks, and this is dividing us. It's not hard to do because the USA is a very flawed place with a lot of wealth inequity.

They’re servile morons.

Wtaf is wrong with that portion of you population.

They would get along quite well with brexiters. Some segments of the human species are........ special.

Raised on evangelical TV preachers and AM radio talk show hosts. The more radical, fire, thunder, brimstone, and fear you can throw at them theatrically the more they love it. Think WWE, carnival freak show barkers, snake oil salesmen…they eat it up. Used to be there was this view of an intelligent, reserved country folk that whiled away their time reading and listening, having a plain sense of what’s right. A quaint image. The lot of them have been taken in by hucksters and proudly show off the Emperor’s new clothes.

They've joined a cult.

My sneaking suspicion is that a majority of the adult population has passed well beyond the sub-acute level of lead exposure and is now showing the side effects.

Lead paint, TEL, 100LL.

Think of it as "throwing shit against the wall and seeing what sticks". That is the role of intellectuals or pundits, whatever you want to call the class that disseminates ideology / PR. There are lots of them and they spout all sorts of crazy stuff. Now basically it's like the theory of evolution through natural selection. Except as individuals we are intelligent and can make decisions like "oh that sold clicks" or "oh that helped pass that law". Who decides that? Well those who work for those that own everything and who see it as their job to increase profit.

So basically ideology is like a secretion of a specialized class that is filtered and selected to "work".

So my theory is that after decades of wealth transfer and increasing inequality, dwindling middle class and lowering of effective quality of life, you need "stronger secretions" to control the masses. Because the old ideology doesn't work any more. One word for it is late stage capitalism.

Another environmental aspect that plays into this I think is climate change - since we already failed to prevent what could result in our extinction or at least in countless genocides, what social contract remains? Why even pretend to be civilized when our civilization obviously has gone insane? Like a decadent indulgence in an orgy of hatred. Or just insanity like in "Don't look up".

Unfortunately the terrifying thing is nothing is actually physically wrong with those people that is making them believe crazy shit. They don’t all have dementia or something.

America is just so dysfunctional that it shoots perfectly normal people off the deep end into crazy (very hateful often) conspiracy views like a particle accelerator shoots protons into stuff to make them explode. Some businesses actually target that as their explicit business model here (YouTube).

We have no idea!

I'm interested in what it's like to live in a country where the culture, society, people are more...United. I don't mean all the same.

I don't think the melting pot saying is true anymore. People don't want to blend together, lack of a sense of community or pride, nothing to be proud of anymore?

Lots of get mine mentality.