Are Americans Just Stupid... [View all]

Or is it something else?
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Apr 11, 2025

Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of folks ask the same question, eyes wide with despair, wine glass in hand like it’s a stress ball:
“How did the United States elect this clown?”

And by this clown, I mean Donald J. Trump—former reality TV personality who “discovered” the word groceries literally a month ago and seems to think it’s new to the rest of us, too. A guy who knows less about global trade economics than my cat James (no offense, James). Serial liar. Six-time bankrupt “businessman” who somehow managed to bankrupt a casino. Rapist (per a judge, not just social media). Draft dodger. Putin pen pal. Man who wants to buy Greenland because he thought it would be “cool.” Creep who thinks it’s “fancy” to gild… toilets.

And yet somehow, this guy—this odiferous, spray-tanned Nazi apologist adult diaper ad steeped in a bowl of word salad—was handed the nuclear codes by the same country that put a man on the moon and invented jazz.

So. What the fuck happened?

The easy (but wrong) answer is: “Americans are stupid.”
And look, I’ve been to a Florida Walmart in August. I get the temptation.

But that’s not quite it.

This isn’t just about bad civics education or Fox News melting brains like microwaved Velveeta.

It’s about early childhood trauma.

Specifically: Authoritarian child abuse—and the way it wires people’s brains, early and permanently, to seek out charismatic narcissistic abusers like heat-seeking missiles launched from the tiny neglected hearts of their own bruised inner children.

Continued
https://open.substack.com/pub/alisav/p/are-americans-just-stupid