If they cared about measurable outcomes we wouldn't be in this situation.

For them, "success" involves feeling that a particular social arrangement has been solidified. It involves an exploitative hierarchy (which they believe is both inevitable and required) where they aren't obviously on the bottom and where "the right people" are on top.

They simply do not care how much it costs to raid people's attics looking for Anne Franco, or even the odds of finding her family, as long as The Authority is taking Firm Steps and people like Anne Franco are afraid.

Quite simply: de minimis import rules make no sense, they are inevitably abused by China in particular to import billions in untaxed goods. No foreign country has a right to sell things in America. China and EU and others impose their own arbitrary redtrictions and taxes on imports but for some reason if America does it, it gets worldwide press because for the longest time, it was just open season as we drained out manufacturing and gutted the base that built America in the first place.

We have laws on the books and they have to be enforced equally, whether you're shipping in entire containers or thousands of small direct mail packages.

They don't have the mental capacity to understand the consequences of their vote.

it's got nothing to do with policies, it's tribal

I am not a Trump voter, but here's my understanding of what they're hoping for, economically speaking. By devaluing the US dollar, American manufacturing becomes more appealing to other nations. I think it's generally believed that tariffs are a pretty lousy way to boost domestic manufacturing, but I think it might be an effective means of accomplishing the goal of devaluing the dollar. This devaluing shouldn't have any direct, negative effect on Americans when buying domestic (e.g. home prices, locally produced food), but will significantly reduce your ability to travel or buy imported goods.

Again, I'm not a Trump voter and I think this is the clumsiest, most dangerous way to bring manufacturing back to the US, but that's my understanding of what their goal is. I'm not even going to touch the Christian nationalist side of the plan.

Lately I've noticed a social trend, where whomever you critique for The Current Mess, someone else is afraid that indirectly lifts justified blame from another group. Maybe that just reflects how we humans have limited capacity for attention and outrage, and there's too much to fix at once.

For example, the split between:

1. The willfully-culpable Republican party.

2. The inept/uninspiring Democratic party.

3. The lazy/clueless non-voters.

I'm not sure how to solve that problem... maybe arguing over prioritization is necessary.

________

P.S.: For something more-actionable, how about this: Many problems exist, individual humans aren't built to consider them all simultaneously and coequally, be kind to well-meaning allies that are focusing on a particular piece.

But Kamala Harris was not perfect in every respect. In fact, she had several policy preferences that don't align perfectly with my own. In a lot of ways, she was just like Trump. Also, she was not a very good public speaker. /s