The world is turning to crap right now because of affinity fraud.

"He goes to my church/eats my traditional food/wears the jersey of my favorite sportsball team. I trust him!"

People decide someone is their friend due to some superficial similarity which a charlatan has dressed himself up in (and conversely that others are their enemy due to some superficial dissimilarity), and then their "friend" steals their political power to do bad things.

And people are too committed to their self-conception as savvy judges of character to admit their error. The error becomes a religion, a folkway, and is persisted across generations. You have to keep committing the error in order to honor your ancestors who were first fooled.