Conaeolos,
Thank you for taking the time to respond. I won't go into each detail, since my main goal was to cover the points as I saw them. You've articulated the whole "The Establishment (whatever that is) is EvilCorp" theory pretty well, but I'm baffled at Trump as Eliot Alderson.
I appreciate your curiosity and share your objective to understand both narratives.
He is certainly not who I would have suspected pre-2016 in any way. A President Trump was a joke even when I was young in the 90s.
I would add that it's not so much that I think the Establishment is evil (although I need to be pulled back on that often) nor do I see him as a force interested in shaking up the establishment for the better like say a Ron Paul. Going into 2016, I was expecting to support my Rand Paul principles never giving much thought to the presidency predicting a run between Jeb - Hillary with an easy win for Hillary. Whom I may have voted [depending on platform] unless going third-party. I tuned out a lot of the changes since W. I was expecting to see her going in having a moderate 'blue dog' democratic feel similar to Bill. I was unhappy with the whole affair, but do well either way and consider it all politics as usual.
Problem is two big unexpected factors came onto the scene to shake up that expectation. Trump and Bernie. Bernie was out for me quickly, but I get the appeal. I certainly admit it would be calmer times if he won, though I suspect little would be able to have gotten accomplished. As it played though what happen is a significant shift in Hillary's politics to the left to account for Bernies popularity. I truly respect 'justice democrats' but couldn't disagree more in terms of approach to their priorites. This shift pretty firmly put my label from independent to republican/libertarian right. Although obviously this trend goes way further back than Bernie.It still was a hard choice back when it was Obama or Romney.
Trump was a tad closer to general politics but with the opposite priorities. I was indifferent to open borders, definitely not pro-trade deals but also did think for the most part America benefited, government can't save jobs, presidents don't affect economy, etc...
So what happened? For one, his base which I label disenfranchised liberals convinced me of these problems but more often the utility of Trump. Even shifted my position on few issues.
Meanwhile, Hillary got a new ally in the disenfranchised republicans who hated Trump's populist rebrand which is a weird hybrid of with Reform party ideas. The media/tech went off the deep end[long time coming]. The internet allowed on the ground verifiable reaserch better than mere news reports and access to tons of POV.This shakeup is really the beginning of when it stopped being about partisanship and got all about the establishment fighting back and what it exposed changed everything. This is why the election went as it did. Didn't matter how much you liked or disliked trump. He was the protest vote.
Now, as to my continued support despite the negative reporting post-election. That started right at the beginning and the deliberate choice to not target the "conflict of interests" or like shady aspects like his "charity" (which like most unstaff charities is not to code). No the pro-establishment opposition literally reversed on a whole bunch of their previous postions with one clear and coordinated goal: delegitimize his election though a crazy story about russia. It makes the whole thing stink more than ever and taking my biggest fears to the next level. Trump has plenty of faults but they go for this story I'd expect to hear from Alex Jones. He served an interesting function and in so exposed the true war: on truth. We have a country where there are two movies on the same screen. There is more to that than Liberal and Conservative. Democrat or Republican.