What amazes me most, and I'll use a personal experience example, is the complete batshit crazy stupidity of people. So, maybe someone can explain this to me.
I grew up in a Union family, thus Democrat. As a young boy and up to early adult, the barn talk(large extended horse family, we always would hang out in the barn and bullshit while working) was often political. My Union Democrat Dad, Grandfather, Uncles and cousins would bitch about illegal immigrants. The Republicans won't do anything about them because most farmers are Repubs and they like the cheap labor, they'd say. And it was true. The R's did not want immigration reform and we still don't have it. All Union Dems complained about the lost jobs, lower wages.
Most of those people are still alive. They have kids that have to compete with immigrants and it isn't working out. How the hell did they switch from a anti-immigration party to a pro-immigration party? To be fair, my Dad saw the light and left the party. But, most have not. How the hell do you forget what you believed 25 years ago especially when what you feared would happen came to be? They are still Dims and now the pro-immigration party.
I have other examples too, like trade, but the immigration one is plain and simple.
I understand the big view as above, but I have never been able to wrap my head around these individual issues. How can otherwise decent people be so batshit crazy? They can't have forgotten the issues then, the problem is the same. I don't see how it's possible to get people to see the big picture when they can't even see that they are now supporting the very thing they knew, years ago, was going to hurt them. What they thought would happen, did happen. And now they are cool with it.
That is a part of the human experience I don't get. I'm fucking baffled.