The biggest lie most successfully sold was that the regime will right all historical wrongs
People invested alot emotionally in this promise & voted them to power
Life in power has just been further enlargement of the promise & every failure a conspiracy by "wrongdoers"... thread https://twitter.com/OmairTAhmad/status/1381457983301853184

of history
But Q is why people are still so besotted?
Leon Festinger provided answer - cognitive dissonance. They just can't vote them out based on non-performance, their psychological selves won't allow that much pain. If anything, it makes those beliefs more entrenched.

Propaganda & cultism are much sharper tools than outright violence & repression. Dearly held beliefs are much harder to break.
One can blame incompetence of opposition or servility of institutions but that is incorrect.

Underlying the blame is the assumption that people are rational & open-minded. That they will vote differently as soon as opposition is more apt.
The reality is totally different. Even with Roosevelt in the fray, people would continue to vote the way are doing.

The belief system may change but only in the face of extra-ordinary loss. Or with training in skepticism, information gathering, perspective taking, etc. but that doesn't work after the fact. So, are we staring at our "lost generation"?

For us, our diversity was our biggest check on national obsession but this has been the biggest heist - unification of insecurities across the lines that are different for each one of us