The Beast in us

This is true. Half of Americans are stupid nasty and foolish. However much we rail against the rigged system there’s no getting away from the fact that this country has at least 100 million complete idiots.
It is small comfort that Republicans are reaping what they have sown, and that Trump is just the logical inevitable conclusion of their tactics and policies - now said openly and not hidden in code - over many years. It is one tiny small comfort that perhaps the party is finally being destroyed. But Trump couldn’t exist as a politician without the utter stupidity, mindlessness, and thuggishness of tens of millions of Americans. It is true that the rigged system facilitated his ascent but you cannot say he is foisted on the people by the elites or by the corporate military-industrial complex that generally runs the country. He is there largely because much of the general American public is stupid, unlikeable, arrogant, and ignorant. And pathologically obsessed with guns.
Maybe the Hispanic high school kids mentioned in the article think that if Trump builds a wall they’ll be on the right side of it. I can’t see any other reason for it except gross stupidity.

I’m not too sure about your statistics, but I’ll chalk it up to “exaggeration to make a point”.
To be sure, I cannot comprehend how any rational, thinking human being could vote for any Republican these days, so your point certainly has some validity. I think Timothy Egan is right about “the beast”.
Initially, ah so many months ago, I was happy to see Trump toss his hat into the ring because I thought it was showing that the GOP had drifted too far to the right and perhaps a businessman could get them back to earlier GOP themes like fiscal responsibility. Time has shown otherwise.
Instead Trump is appealing to the more base instincts of the groups who traditionally base their stances on fear and hate. He’s reaching out to America’s white males who “have no balls" and are too incompetent to compete for jobs with women, blacks, Mexicans or anyone else for that matter. They have always been a part of America, and Trump is mobilizing them. He is the patron saint of slack-jawed, buck toothed, inbred America.
He can say all he wants that he is not like Hitler. And you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still just a pig.

I’m not too sure about your statistics, but I'll chalk it up to "exaggeration to make a point". To be sure, I cannot comprehend how any rational, thinking human being could vote for any Republican these days, so your point certainly has some validity. I think Timothy Egan is right about "the beast". Initially, ah so many months ago, I was happy to see Trump toss his hat into the ring because I thought it was showing that the GOP had drifted too far to the right and perhaps a businessman could get them back to earlier GOP themes like fiscal responsibility. Time has shown otherwise. Instead Trump is appealing to the more base instincts of the groups who traditionally base their stances on fear and hate. He’s reaching out to America's white males who “have no balls" and are too incompetent to compete for jobs with women, blacks, Mexicans or anyone else for that matter. They have always been a part of America, and Trump is mobilizing them. He is the patron saint of slack-jawed, buck toothed, inbred America. He can say all he wants that he is not like Hitler. And you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still just a pig.
To say Trump is like Hitler is to let the real modern Nazis off the hook. Trump is just expressing the same views as the average conservative republican. THEY are the new Nazis, just that they're smart enough to hide that fact, for example by expressing outrage at some of Trumps hatred and bigotry. He's just saying what they think, in a manner that's just right for his audience. Now I happen to think, as I've said elsehwere, that he's no dummy. Whereas Hitler believed what he was saying, I don't believe Trump does. He's a businessman first, and greed trumps bigotry. Capitalists like him don't give a hoot about the color of your skin as long as your wallet is available for looting.