Even if Trump dies or otherwise retires from public life, the koolaid factories and delivery network is established.

The political system is rotten, with far too much reliance on money, and on candidates who will simply push the right buttons. There's no depth, no nuance, no vision except delusionally bigging up America.

There's so much magical thinking, from the evangelicals and the right wing conspiracy nuts to the general denial of science, which is funny, as science is nothing more than looking for solid evidence of stuff. And then deeper, and I think more insidious as it is as fundamental as apple pie, there's this American thing where if you believe something strongly enough it'll come true. If you have faith, you can't fail. The hero is full of bullets and someone shouts 'you can do it' and he spits out the dust and fights back harder than he could before he was shot the first time. Wishful thinking gone mad.

I don't know how this attitude is going to be replaced with a bit of humility, a bit of stoicism, a bit of acceptance of our smallness and vulnerability.

I can't see how things will improve until attitudes change. America won't be humiliated but won't be stable without some humility getting in somehow.