I know outsiders view the US this way but there are many people (about half the population) for which this is our only place and don't necessarily want it to be strip mined for that.
If you can understand this (and I know understanding politics for a foreign country can be very difficult. I've spent a lot of time learning to do this as a hobby) the behavior of the US electorate will be much more understandable.
I'm not the person who wrote that, but I think "strip mined" means that "MAGA" views foreigners (legal and illegal) as taking advantage of the US and depleting its resources.
FWIW, I think there's a legitimate complaint that illegal immigration depletes our resources (but there are also positives). I have a friend who teaches at a high-school with a large population of 'undocumented' students and he's constantly railing about how they unfairly use school resources to the detriment of the other students.
I think it's a much less legitimate complaint about legal immigration, visas, etc.
There are two parts to this. People are feeling frustrated and left behind. Its not only the US. Its nearly everywhere. COVID certainly didn't help. That is what is giving rise to right and far right parties getting elected all over the world. This is not as hard to understand.
But many people learning about US politics seem to confuse right wing incendiary rhetoric with what people want. People want solutions to the income divide. The easy solution presented by right wingers is that money, jobs etc is a limited resource and "outsiders are strip mining". Two entirely different things. What people need and how it is being achieved.
The reality is rich people have always disdained the poor - "they don't work hard enough and don't deserve help". While people at least had that empathy for fellow underprivileged. But under constant bombardment about being "strip mined" they have slowly let that go. COVID certainly didn't help. And even then that is not unique to US. Nearly every country populace has something against immigrants. US is not unique in that aspect too.
If America was passing a law to provide livable wages to its workers everyone would champion the cause. But I am sure many loud RWs will oppose that as "welfare society" and "not what people want" etc.
But to many outsiders who grew up in the era of American exceptionalism this is a unique situation. The last place anyone expected this to happen is America and everyone will lament that.
The last place anyone expected this to happen is America
I don't really understand this. In my circles, I have heard people warning about the direction that the US was heading in since the 90s. The US government has been working for We, The Corporations instead of the people for decades (Bayh-Dole, repealing Glass-Steagal*, zero repercussions for the subprime mortgage crisis). The militarization of police forces didn't happen overnight either, and neither did the anti-intellectual bias in US corporate media (for example, I remember when Sarah Palin was hyped up as a viable presidential candidate).
So no, from my point of view none of this is unexpected nor unforeseen. The only thing that could have surprised some people was the timing (directly after Obama), but the direction was communicated loudly.
* sidenote: the Glass-Steagal act was enacted just a few years after the 1929 stock market crash which caused the Great Depression; and within ten years of repealing it, we got hit with the largest financial crisis since 1929. Lessons were unlearned and not learnt again.
There are similar problems with this and tourism. Except tourists who don't understand your culture tend to leave relatively quickly and don't get to vote in your elections.
The "fuck you I have mine" mentality isn't a mystery to anyone. We know you're just selfish assholes who view denying others opportunities as a mechanism for maintaining your own feeble positions in society.
I don't know why everyone feels like they have a right to live in the US. I don't have a right to live in India, China, or Mexico. It's actually much harder to immigrate to those places than the US from what I hear.
I know it looks like the whole country is just made up of corporations but there are actual people here who have lived here for hundreds of years. There's a whole country that needs to function and it only tolerates this stuff insofar as it benefits them which is a completely reasonable way for any citizenry to view their economy.
If you can understand this (and I know understanding politics for a foreign country can be very difficult. I've spent a lot of time learning to do this as a hobby) the behavior of the US electorate will be much more understandable.