We were generally pretty smart about what we were doing. Even Iraq, I think the idea was to overthrow a brutal dictator (we all agree he was, right?) and liberate a country in the middle east that would be friendly and allow us to be less dependent on Israel and the Saudis.
I protested against that war, but it was certainly a hell of a lot smarter than threatening Greenland or Mexico.
Despite all the memes, compared to the average person, W was reasonably smart. Maybe not on the scale of presidents. And evil or not, the people in his cabinet were pretty smart. Dick Cheney might have been evil, but he wasn't a fucking idiot.
We've had our issues and we've had our strengths, but we've never been this fucking dumb on a federal level. We're literally taking advice from Putin.
This is the first time we've had a president who doesn't realize that he's in the same boat as the rest of us. Might have a better cabin on that boat, but if he sinks it... and Putin is whispering in his ear that it'd be fun to sink the boat.
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It was all about shifting the Overton window. The establishment, corporate Republicans realized that if they just go a little farther and pull from the full on Nazi side that the middle would be very close to what they actually want.
The thing about creating a movement like that is that you bring on True Believers, and it becomes hard to tell the difference. They didn't intend for that contingent to actually drive, but they paved the path and all :shocked Pikachu: when he grabbed the wheel.
I still hold that he gets absolutely nowhere without Putin's help. I watched r/the_donald from the start. It was a brilliant demonstration of the mix of humor and censorship as propaganda.