How did a demagogue like Trump wind up in power?

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Anyways, the reason for the rise of the alt-right and general right-wing sociopathy is the sense that the US empire is in decline. US corporations abandoned the US when they decided to go global and move manufacturing elsewhere in their perpetual quest to profit off cheaper labor. Because corporations and business are too powerful to be constrained through the political process of any single government, people's anger must be directed to some other scapegoat. Instead of attacking the powerful, fascism thrives on attacking the weak and powerless. It's a social disease that rear's it's ugly head whenever capitalism finds itself in crisis.

This is from September 2016 but just as applicable now.

"... when a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or count himself lost. … All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. ..." [H.L. Mencken]