She chooses her facts (such as they are) to confirm her bias. As is the case with many Trump supporters, something is true only if Trump or Right Wing news sources say it’s true.
Working hard isn’t enough. Look at it from the POV of the Trump takeover of the GOP. That was powered largely by fear of loss of status by specific groups. Trump had a ready-made group that were already convinced, they just wanted someone to say it out loud.
One presentation of the rise of Donald Trump focuses on the anti-establishment backlash that the Republican Party experienced during the presidency of Barack Obama. The tea party was one manifestation, and Trump’s appearance as a presidential candidate in 2015 did attempt to leverage that frustration with establishment Washington.
More important, though, was the overlap between that anti-establishment sentiment and the embrace of outright false claims about political subjects. Part of the frustration with Republican leaders was that their actions and rhetoric were increasingly divergent from the rhetoric on Fox News and on fringier upstarts like Breitbart. Trump was both unattached to D.C. respectability and immersed in the fringe-right vernacular, and that’s what he presented to Republican primary voters.
I was replying to the question of addiction per se. Just FYI, back in the mid-70’s, we noticed that many people came back addicted (demonstrated by a specific pharmacological challenge) but a surprising number overcame that addiction without treatment. The question was why? Our research suggested that the addictions were likely as consequence of the high stress situation into which these people were placed, but removal of that heavy stress over time resulted in many self-detoxing. Follow up in our clinic with patients seemed to confirm this hypothesis. I should also mention that genetic variants of the opioid receptor class were just beginning to be recognized and may have also had an influence on the outcome for any individual. The head of our lab was in favor of decriminalization of such drugs but not in lack of regulation of them. There is a difference, you know. Or maybe you don’t know. If you want to get yourself some group to blame, go after Big Pharma, not the unfortunate victim of these various drugs.
However, the problem is I have worked in this general field for 50+ years, I have a strong background in the biochemistry involved and of the structures of receptor proteins. This is hardly the format for a deep discussion of individual receptor variability, the effects of ligands on number and properties of receptors , and their various interactions. Trying to simplify down to a question of “character” (or lack thereof) just sounds dumb to someone like me, but that is what a lot of people are doing here.
Also Paynefully stupid.