These people were around when Obama was president (and wanted to publicly execute him too). We already returned to medieval shit when they started torturing alleged "terrorists" and detaining people indefinitely without trial at Guantanamo Bay.

You gotta understand that there's a significant portion of the American population that is explicitly anti-intellectual, that mistrust reason altogether because it might get in the way of faith and therefore be evil. Only one in four Americans believes that humans were created by evolution without divine intervention, and that's about doubled compared to 20 years ago. I used to live near where the Scopes Trial took place and I can assure you that they're still mad about it 100 years later.

That's before you even factor in the massive amounts of money corporations put into propaganda to promote right-wing ideas, the entire far-right media sphere, all the podcasters and streamers they have that we don't have. And before you factor in the declining economic conditions, and our horribly fucked up political system.

I really think a lot of foreigners have this really rosy picture of the US because they only really know the big cities.