My theory is brain atrophy. It’s not that those people are stupid and unable to learn, it’s that they don’t have to use their brains for any sort of analytical thinking and kind of forget how to do it. You can still teach them their trade and they will be good at their job but they are never challenged intellectually. School is easy and you can finish education just by playing sports or whatever, news are predigested and dumbed down, entertainment is not intellectually stimulating in any way. Most people go through their lives without ever having to contemplate anything deeper than what hamburger to have for lunch. Then when Trump shows up they simply don’t have the brain capacity needed to understand he’s lying to them. “He says the war is good for us”. That’s it. There’s no “but” because their brains can’t do that anymore. The processing just stops right there.

Of course there are still curious people there that study, wonder about things and try to understand the world. It’s just that they are the minority now. In other countries the proportions are reversed for now but things don’t look that good there either.