Marks asks (rhetorically, but let’s ignore that), “Does anyone ever learn anything?”
No.
No one learns anything because no one is forced to learn anything.
We are so wealthy, so insulated from need and consequence, that it would be lightning striking a functioning Ford Pinto on a sunny day for the American voting public to learn anything.
Thankfully, our Constitution, formed with human stupidity and avarice in mind, accommodates this. We will learn nothing, we will fail to fail, and we will ask this same question in two years as if it’s the first time it has occurred to us.