I believe politics encompasses all of that, especially from a sociological perspective. We went from politics still being fairly boring and passe to in your face dramatic and populist in around 7 years. The vote is popular with a wider demographic than I've ever seen before. I see the way our politics influences our society happening in cycles, or pendulum swings. We are back to a Populist America, and
we are better than
they are again. Protesting is in fashion again, and we are going to ******* protest pretty much
anything and everything we don't approve of. The cruel trick is that the
right is now involved in much of it.
I believe we both rail on this issue in our own ways. To me, that's Trump. We let a crooked con man take over one of our major political parties. He is an ugly, small minded rich, entitled old narcissist who rattled cages, gave **** all about running the government properly and generally pissed everyone off. He gives his magaturd base hope in that
any deeply inadequate and incompetent human being can do the job of running the most powerful country on the planet. What else could we
think would happen?

I'm convinced Charles Manson would have been a marginally better choice, but hands down most divisive *pResident of my lifetime, at least, IMHO.
But that's on us.
We
know this, and what's worse,
they know it. But the gaslighting continues. With a little help from social media, trying to legitimately create implausible covers for blatant failure, shortcomings and corruption from a revered politician/otherwise famous person is now America's favorite full contact sport.
It doesn't. No takey backseys. People ruined their lives on purpose simply because they lost an election and got their, as you say, 'authoritarian strongman' taken from them. Not my problem. People made to believe they are so aggrieved, so
entitled that their
whole identities revolve around some weird orange dude who could not give one **** on a cellular level about them. Surreal.
The fix is that many of these individuals will die soon.