I mean, foods like soy sauce and yogurt and sauerkraut predate industrialization, but are very processed. I wouldn't worry too much about MSG in particular, since it is also mostly made by fermentation:
Salt is more fundamental for the body than just flavoring. I'd hesitate even to call it a spice. That said, umami ingredients like mushrooms and seaweed are certainly used together with salt.
The Pope directs the spiritual priorities of his Bishops and thereby all Catholics, a lot of people. He's not going to be able to say "Kill, fornicate, and steal now!" without losing all credibility, but he can say, "We're going to ask for contributions monthly for X good cause." There's also money and diplomatic effort to be directed to dioceses around the world.
That's easy to explain--cultural and media institutions have disparaged Republican voters for so long that Trump voters inherently distrust pollsters. They might or might not turn out in a given election, but they have nothing to gain by telling anybody.
NextDoor is an...interesting...place from which to select a sample of voters. There are plenty of stupid people to go around, and Trump certainly doesn't have a monopoly on them--I would argue that the Left's appeals to various identity voters are also explicitly courting stupid people, they're just insulated by being members of protected classes.
The example you gave is an interesting one, because it's a situation where a very real concern--the public resources of small communities being stretched beyond their limits because the federal government refuses to enforce immigration law--was deflected by the media to something ridiculous. ("Brown people are invading our towns and eating our cats!") People voted for Trump because they saw through that kind of tactic, and they're far from stupid for doing so.
No organized right-wing group tipped the scales in this election. Aside from the Democrats' weak presidential candidate and last-minute substitution, arrogant and clearly biased big media organizations annoyed people enough to turn out and vote against what they were selling.
Mostly because "they're stupid" is a lazy argument that ignores why you think they're stupid. You can say "Well, they voted against their best economic interests," assuming they're all net recipients of government cash, but they say they don't want to be, and they want to dismantle executive departments they perceive as wasteful. You can say "They're violent," but Trump campaigned on being the peace-negotiator who didn't start any wars, and Harris had no real response to that. You can say "He hates women," but there are apparently enough women who are either pro-life or didn't see abortion as the main campaign issue. Harris's commercials said "We want change," but she's the incumbent! If change didn't happen by now, why would it four years from now?
The impeachments and conviction were perceived by his voters, rightly or wrongly, as cheap political acts done by a corrupt administration. And his opponent, elected in the primaries, was pulled away for actual dementia. If you want to win people over, this is the exact opposite of the way to do it.
Maybe another perspective on this is that Democrats were preaching to the upper arm of the K-shaped recovery that everything is fine with their bureaucracy in charge (because nobody actually cares about Biden or Kamala personally), and the people on the lower arm voted on "Hell no, it's not!" This was the Springfield, OH thing, where the media tried to laugh it off as a few racists claiming pet-eating, but a small town was truly stretched beyond its limits through illegal immigration.
People in a non-swing state figure "yolo" and vote for their emotional favorite, because they're dissatisfied with the status quo and have no other way to express it?
Can you explain why his conviction is relevant? As it stands, the facts are that it was for hush-money paid to Stormy Daniels, but it's clearly viewed as political by voters. I would agree that it was a grave matter if his felony were an unrelated murder or something, but that's not the situation, and again, voters are not stupid.
What you call victim-blaming may be mixing up cause and effect. Voters aren't stupid. They hear "the economy is doing great!" but they see their grocery bills. Maybe the victims are just tired of being victims and voted accordingly?
I don't see any clear articulation of the dangers, other than that he's a convicted criminal, which I argue is for purely political reasons. Republican candidates have been labeled "HITLER 2" since Goldwater. I'm not cheerleading, but rather am trying to make policy arguments that add as much value as possible.
Maybe? Democrats had the chance to propose something better, but they decided to prop up a geriatric puppet until they couldn't, and then were forced to prop up his widely unpopular VP. I'll take trade war over domestic goods shortages, which is what price caps inevitably create.
If he removed licenses from media companies that were critical of him, there would be approximately 0 media companies, and yet he's on track to win. One of the biggest takeaways from this election is that the populace largely doesn't trust the media.
Harris proposed peacetime price controls, an idea that hasn't been tried since Nixon, and for good reason. I don't think Democrats have the high ground on economics.
The things he says he wants to dismantle are bloated executive-branch bureaucracies. If he actually manages to do it (which he didn't during his first term), it would be traumatic for a lot of federal employees, but not exactly the death of democracy.
You also have to keep in mind, "An economy exists, whether we create one or not." Too many people approach economics like people standing beside a waterfall, ignoring the stream.