This is just "marketing". Its targeted advertising. We've been using it to sell cars and beer and cigarettes for decades. We teach courses in how to organize these campaigns in our business schools, where it is touted as one of the "glories" of Capitalism. Its the intersection of Madison Avenue, Harvard Business School and Silicon Valley. Did you really think it was all about persuading the consumer your product was superior to your competitor's? It's all about the practical application of psychological techniques, mass communications and digital data analysis to control human behavior for economic and political gain. Actually, there really is no difference, is there?

We talk a lot of sanctimonious bullshit about "free" markets and "free" enterprise but we expect a good businessman to be able to subvert and degrade that system as much as possible. And we reward him mightily when he does. And it costs money, too. We've built a mighty industry and a host of scientific disciplines to carry it out, and the Supreme Court has declared that donating anonymously to its operation is "free" speech.

This is how we sell expensive and dangerous toys, unhealthy breakfast cereal and vaping to kids. And if we use it to peddle poison to our own children, how can we be surprised if it is applied to installing a toxic grotesque buffoon in the White House?

Trump is not an anomaly. This is how our system works. This is what it was designed to do.