He is the logical and inevitable culmination of the softening up and stupidification practiced on the American population over the last forty years.
Part of the degradation involves making celebrity the be-all and end-all, the one undying, ubiquitous cathexis of the “mainstream” media.
Andrew Bacevich writes at The Nation.
“To an extent unmatched by any other figure in American public life, Trump understands that previous distinctions between the ostensibly serious and the self-evidently frivolous have collapsed. . . in contemporary America, celebrity confers authority. Mere credentials or qualifications have become an afterthought.”