Hank, I grew up in an environment of toxic white men as far as I could see even while standing on a ladder. For me this sort of man was situation normal. It has only gotten worse over the decades. The MSM tells narratives that make it okay to be awful people. Maybe it's residual influence from reality TV, I dunno. I feel it only makes us weak culturally and politically to save costs in getting us to enrich whoever's in charge at the time.

Adam, Or any of those shows that encouraged people to be awful to one another for pissant sums of money while the networks and media raked in huge sums of cash from advertising paid by the filter feeders that pass for large corporations responsible for separating trillions of dollars from the world's people.

In particular though, Trump made being an asshole cool.

Reality TV was a huge cultural influence in the US and I suspect that there are a few that haven't aged out yet.

It had no influence on me, I didn't watch a single minute of it.

Mostly though I'm thinking it's to weaken us as a people. Can't keep that high international happiness index if Americans know better and care about themselves enough to demand superior quality in their leaders.

People need to learn to say no to stupid things.

I sampled to understand what was going on and made my observations to understand how it was influencing the people I had access to.

Checking the merchandise is one thing, but people don't have to buy what is being sold.

Well, 'no' to what the individual finds stupid. Which I've done most my life. My society's and people's response is pretty much "fine, eff off and die somewhere out of sight."