>>42087
>Was that an anomaly really?
Yes. A clear outsider to the US political system; wealthy, but crass (culturally, politically), outside the spectrum of PC rhetoric, a "populist" (fake in effect, but real in rhetoric), a dumb TV show host for Christ sake :^). You can see how much of an anomaly he was simply by observing the extreme level of "immunological reaction" in the establishment (media, academia, technocrats, glowinthedarks, career politicians, vassal subsystems, etc) to his unexpected "infiltration".
At the end of his mandate, we can of course observe that the results are, after so much "blood and tears" and specially hysteria, really not much out the norm for the US. In fact most of us realised there wouldn't be much change already short months after elected. But here's some clear example of irregularity (apart from what was already mentioned): USA has been at war for a very significant majority of its history, IIRC near 90% if calendar years at war are counted. Very few US presidents can be said not to have started a war. I'm sure these 4 consecutive years without war are rare in US history. So while overall the empire didn't change much during his presidency, he was indeed out of the norm.
He is now gone, for good I bet. His voters though continue to be outside the norm. Which is why the system's leukocytes continue to attack them. They need to fight back or will be swallowed.
>People, businesses, and even the state government relies on their various services heavily. Government bureaucrats share documents, even state secrets via their services.
When was very young and I would see ads for businesses and govt agencies where the communication channels would be telephone numbers and email addresses. Then mostly email addresses. Then only handles for a handful of US gay area companies. It was baffling to me how people were so seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were in short surrendering part of their sovereignty. Could they not picture in their heads the networks? Could they not see they were basically outsourcing the state infrastructure?
>Heh tens of thousands of teenagers would go bonkers they can't poke at their phones all day.
They might indeed for a while. But young people tend to heal rather fast. I would expect this to quickly result in much improved health and maturity.