Nets Are Full, Now Back to Port, page-9

The drama/romance feature film The American President (1995) was laced with sentimentality, but one enduring contribution that it made to pop culture was, imo, an outstanding commentary about leadership and followers that could be paraphrased as:

...people desperate punters want leadership. And in the absence of genuine leadership, they will listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They're so thirsty for it, they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.
(Paraphrasing credit to the following YouTube poster's clip description. Minor modification by yours truly.)

I constantly need to remind myself of this when trying to make sense of the incomprehensible.