I don't understand how, given bullshitting the public about Making America Great Again has been the norm since Reagan, Americans are still so surprised to find ...oops it was all lies for votes!

Academics like Zinn and Chomsky, popular music, movies, TV have been calling out the lies for decades.

Americans are that fucking dumb, I guess.

It doesn't help that in many cases, even the "better" choice in candidate lies considerable amounts along with people and party that support them.

It's not like we got the Truth Party versus the Liar Party, Its more like "Lies a bit more often party" and "Lies a bit less party" because both sides know propaganda works and uses it. And when you add in social biases there are enough lies to go around for either starting position to point at their perceived opposition party and proclaim them untrustworthy. Only a fraction of people are going to put in more effort to discern what is truth and keep track of who lies more and what lies are bigger or not, the rest decided to bandwagon along with their aligned "friends" as soon as they started getting confused by deception on both sides.

Also I don't think US political parties and politicians align well with the US population to start with. If someone disagrees with what 80% of what one party does, and 70% of what the other part does, their only choices are to pick a party they inherently disagree with slightly less or not vote. People who say out loud they think both parties are garbage are often shut down by people on both sides like they are planted opposition and shuns anyone who dares not give full support and backing all the time.

People don't know anything about anything, generally. Any sort of political discussion is incredibly frustrating because there's no agreement on very basic facts. We can't even get to the point where we discuss our values or what we think are the best ways to achieve those values, because we can't even agree on basic things like whether vaccines save lives or which places are wealthier.

Just look at all the nonsense around tariffs. This was a huge thing with this admin, and people generally don't know what they are!