Cause-and-effect chains in history.

Anything that happens in nature, including human history, has underlying causes. Often more than one, often a whole slew of contributing factors. However, there are always critical causes, without which the same event would not have happened or, at least, would have been fundamentally different.

This train of thought was started by a FRONTLINE documentary called “Trump's American Carnage". In its advertising blurb it says: “Our film identifies how, for years, the country’s political leaders missed, ignored and discounted clear warnings of the violence and chaos that was to come.”

Warning signs translate into cause and effect chains. How was it possible? One level down Frontline blames “the country’s political leaders” and probably it will stop there. But the question remains: who caused the political leaders to support Trump? The answer: 70-odd million of American voters. Next question: “What made these voters embrace Trump’s “distrust, divison, anger and racism”? The answer is twofold, but without the critical one, none of it would have happened: the unbelievable level of stupidity and lack of critical thinking among Trump’s supporters. Next question: what is responsible for this stupidity and lack of critical thinking? The answer: the Capitalist economic system that has been systematically dumbing down the population to maximize profit by making people think that $999.99 is cheaper than $1000.00 – and many other tricks like that to make people react without critical thinking.

So the cause-and-effect chain in play behind the “Trump carnage” is Capitalism-dumbing down-opportunistic leaders-Trump. I doubt that the Frontline documentary will go that deep. And, without identifying the “Prime Mover”, the chain will never be broken.

Of course, the backward chain doesn't end with the Capitalist economic system, and the next legitimate question is: "what makes this system possible?", but the answer to that belongs to another blog, maybe later.