I think now of a woman who when I first moved up here was in her late teens. She was apolitical in the sense of any expressed interest in national politics, but would readily volunteer her beliefs back then in assorted conspiracy theories, mostly about the American moon landings and also the alleged Roswell UFO incident.
When the latter was totally debunked by the US having released info in 1990 about Project Mogul, she dismissed that as an elaborate coverup attempt, and she insisted the moon landings were all filmed in Arizona.
Lo and behold when Trump turned up as the GOP nominee in 2016, she suddenly became an advocate for his election. She said he'd find out for sure what the deep state was up to all this time pulling the wool over our eyes. She didn't have a clue what his trade or any other policies were. I asked where she heard about "the deep state" --which I'd never heard her mention before 2016-- and she said well it was obvious "that whole thing" had been part of "their plot" all along, and that it just it took someone brave like Trump to dare to shine a light on it.
She had a four year college degree from downstate at a decent SUNY school. No clue how she acquired her ever more exotic belief system, but if she unloaded it on you during a social event hereabouts in the community on some occasion, it was pretty startling... no matter what other people's right or left political orientation might be.
Even some other mildly pro-Trump Rs I knew back then were startled at her conversion to Trump-advocacy politics, I think. They were into his column in 2016 on deregulation and conservative court picks, but she just seemed to have taken a turn off the road towards wacko.
I have no sense of what she's like now, but wonder if, and how, people who became fervid fans of Trump out of the blue like that are going to switch it off when he exits the "mainstream" politics that he managed to hijack.
