The most common description that liberal-democratic America uses to refer to Donald Trump’s GOP-MAGA followers is that they are “crazy.” This description seems entirely appropriate. Just watch and listen to Trump — and his followers in the street and in Congress — and you will agree: Yes, they are crazy.

But, we wonder: Didn’t the average-normal British subjects in the colonies consider the 1776 hothead rebels out-of-their-minds crazy? They wanted to go to war against Mother England, that had the mightiest military in the world, for a vague notion called “liberty.” These colonists were obviously crazy.

What Donald Trump and his cohort want to do with the United States is quite crazy because it is just as revolutionary. Trump has declared that he is going to be the “dictator” just for “one day,” But a “one day” dictator can easily be an “everyday” dictator, so in essence he is declaring that, if elected, he will become a dictator for life. Once elected, legally or otherwise, he will do away with the Constitution and the rest of America’s political structure and all its incidental institutions. The American Republic will be a fascist nation in less than six days. Nothing will stand in his way of remaking America in his image.

What’s crazier is that this crazy man, who has vanquished all his Republican primary rivals, is leading Joe Biden — the most predictably traditional politician in America today — in the polls. This half-witted man, with a third-grade vocabulary, fascist worldview and illiterate grasp of global history and geography, not to mention notoriously narcissistic tendencies, is favored to win the election in 2024.

Naturally, liberal-Democrats, who have been comfortable with the capitalist-dominant manners of economics and politics in America, are pulling their hair out in despair. They cannot understand how American voters would choose such a crazy-ignorant-narcissist as the leader for themselves and generations to come.

These liberal-Democrats don’t understand Trump’s America because they don’t realize that Trump’s America, as an historical development, is ahead of Biden’s America. Unbeknownst to Biden’s Democrats, American voters have been slowly changing — since the end of World War II — to resemble Trump himself in character (crazy-ignorant-narcissistic). Likewise, their society is now more like Trump’s America (crazy-ignorant-narcissistic) than Joe Biden’s liberal-capitalist America. Indeed, the psychological-cultural profile of the nation’s future looks definitely more like Trump than Biden. An American child born now is more likely to become a Trump follower (crazy, ignorant, narcissistic) than a Biden-type citizen who believes in community, decency and union jobs.

Joe Biden’s America is an anachronistic homage to the era when America had only three TV channels and most fathers had union jobs. In this America, politicians and corporate leaders worked together for the benefit of all Americans (including Blacks) and most Americans trusted what they got from books and newspapers and neighbors. There, real and imagined, people were reasonable and trusted the stable economic and political structure of their society and believed in a brighter future for the American Republic. Quite amazingly, Biden and his cohort still believe in this America and wonder, almost insanely, how half of America, and more Blacks and Hispanics joining Trump, would prefer Trump.

But, just as history was with the 1776 revolutionaries, Trump’s new rebels also have history on their side. At this moment, the American population is evenly divided between Biden’s and Trump’s Americans. But that even division is like a glacier; it’s slowly but definitely moving from Biden’s America to Trump’s. It is unthinkable that, for their daily social knowledge, these isolated Americans would return to reading books and newspapers, and talking to their neighbors and friends.

Trump’s America is here to stay, and prosper. His disinformation will become more and more sophisticated, perhaps with Russian help, and hence more believable. Trump’s Americans will get their information mostly from their favorite cable TV, smart phones and social media, not from books and newspapers and trusted leaders. TV programs would become more and more “reality” and action-based, making people more crazy-ignorant-narcissistic. Spectator sports are already moving away from old America’s slow-acting baseball to more violent and fast-paced football and basketball. Mass entertainment in general is getting faster, louder and bloodier. In spite of some sporadic successes, union jobs are not in the future of corporate America that can easily persuade workers against joining unions. Americans are becoming easier to arouse as a mob but harder to reason and unite as a public.

Nothing in America today indicates that somehow we will read more, talk to each other more, and watch less TV and depend less on social media, or become more trusting of other Americans, or be more involved in our childrearing as parents, or take less drugs and drink less alcohol or crave less entertainment. As a generation, Trump’s Americans are short-tempered, violent and juvenile, easily susceptible to conspiracy theories and lies, and here we are looking at ourselves.

Can Biden’s America — with the help of courts, news media and voters — stop Trump’s rebels before they turn America fascist? It’s highly unlikely. King George, with all the institutions under his command, could not stop the “spirit” of the era: The American pursuit of liberty was here to stay, and prosper for the next hundred years. Likewise, Trump’s America, in its atavistic pursuit of fascism, is here to stay, and prosper for all eternity. Historically, the spirit of the era is with Trump.

We will prove this in our 2024 election.

Jon Huer, columnist for the Recorder and retired professor, lives in Greenfield.