Thinking aloud

I’m wondering, does it make sense to anyone else to think of the American “body politic” as if it/we had somehow developed something like a severe immunodeficiency disease? Many people go on about how many of today’s voters are stupid or evil, but it seems unlikely to me that people are that much more stupid or evil than they were twenty years ago. Yet we seem to have collectively lost whatever ability we once had to “throw off” an attraction to a clearly malevolent and dangerous political leader—one openly bent on destroying our traditions of government–even after having suffered from an earlier “bout” of his leadership that should have given us immunity to his continued appeal.

My next question is, if this metaphor DOES make any sense, can we identify which elements of our political, social and communication systems that once offered some protective immunity have been compromised, and how it happened? And, can we envision any way to repair or replace those mechanisms so that future voters do not remain equally vulnerable to malign leaders or cult-like, fantastical beliefs? (Or perhaps, to change our system in ways that reduce the power of the most vulnerable voters to drive our leadership choices?)