I have a theory that an unrecognized contributor to the current state of the United States is its reaction to the Cold War and the end to the Cold War. In an articled titled "How Libertarian Democracy Skepticism Infected the American Right 
" Will Wilkinson writes:
>Crucially, the end of the Cold War didn’t end the anti-socialist alliance of libertarians and conservatives. “Fusionism” did not come unfused. On the contrary, American conservatism continued to grow more ideologically anti-redistributive—and more skeptical of the legitimacy of redistribution-enabling democratic institution—as libertarian-leaning donors, intellectuals, and politicians gained influence in the Republican Party. The Speaker of the House is an Ayn Rand fan. Ron Paul’s son is a senator.
In other words, conservatives who dislike the redistribution of wealth legislated by the New Deal, aligned with libertarians who view all government as illegitimate.
Wilkinson starts the article referring to Nancy MacLean's book "Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America" Amazon stating:
>MacLean is overly fond of Infowars-style dot-connecting, but I’m not going to pile on. Instead, I’d like to focus on a couple of big things MacLean gets right: the libertarian-influenced American right is hostile to democracy, and it is a big problem.
On why he thinks the libertarian-leaning right has a distaste for democracy, Wilkinson writes:
>The true story of the libertarian-leaning right’s distaste for democracy is simple on the surface, but complicated in the depths. The simple story is that libertarians generally think that voters tend make a lot of bad decisions at the ballot box, constantly harming their own interests and violating basic rights. The beginning of the complicated story is that libertarianism, as a political stance distinct from 18th and 19th century “classical liberalism,” evolved to serve as a radical ideological antidote to socialism in both its fascist and communist guises. Fascism and communism were tyrannical and murderous. And they were alarmingly popular throughout the 20th century. This made simple, majority-rule democracy look like a loaded gun with which liberal societies might shoot themselves in the head.
The thinking is that voters in a democracy will vote against their self interests and "destroy itself, and the golden goose of liberal capitalism."