I have quite a large number of US colleagues and enjoy visiting the states (pre-covid) regularly. Watching from a distance what is happening is really painful, and the distance means that I only get ~1% of the experience so its pretty difficult to get a sense for what its like 'on the ground'. I don't pretend to understand any of it.

I could not comprehend how any country could entertain the idea of electing Trump, let alone elect him AFTER the details that emerged during his campaign. I still cannot comprehend how he got 75M odd votes to come within a hairs breath of a second term given the daily shit show he ran. I have met people in my own country who praise him and even though they have zero skin in the game (he is not our shit-show to deal with). I've had long discussions with them to try and understand what the fuck is wrong with them, what is preventing them from seeing what is so CLEARLY obvious to me and most other people in terms of his shortcomings as a person let alone a world leader.

The QANON shit, its the same thing, I don't get it. People I work with revealing a considerable lack of reasoning ability, following some dogshit conspiracy theory down a rabbit hole, and being so sure about it that they post it on social media.

And its spreading, I've no doubt of that. The rest of the world absorbs quite a bit of American culture by osmosis, much of it good or at least neutral, but you can sense that the Atlantic wont be enough to hold back the crazy virus kicking off here in some shape.

The biggest revelation for me over the last 5+ years is, while most people are good, kind and reasonable if given a chance they can also be led astray very easily, and some significant % of the population were fucking nuts all along.