To defeat Trump, voters must understand the process that has made him possible. The overriding factor here is the gutting of the US economy by Wall Street in the context of neoliberal globalization and the offshoring of production, destroying millions of American jobs, lowering the standard of living, and featuring mass foreclosures after the Lehman Brothers subprime derivatives crisis of 2008;
these problems were exacerbated by a series of covert operations where the official explanations were unable to convince large parts of the population; nonetheless, these covert operations were sufficient to trigger a series of forever wars in the Middle East, spreading disorientation and demoralization, and destroying much of the public trust in the government. Conflicts and resentments were also stoked by the fragmentation of society into contending rival identity groups.