Political Memes

You see Neoliberalism is also a form of Authoritarianism, or more precisely it's a way of transforming Democracy into Oligarchy.

And it's actually quite simple if subtle:

• In Capitalist Democractic countries there are two main forms of power: the State, whose leaders are elected by a vote were all citizens are the same and count the same (ideally, in practice not really) and Money which buys all kinds of things, including better treatment by the Justice System and which is an incredibly uneven power.
• Neoliberalism is all about the State removing itself from the Markets, i.e. the place were Money operates and which impacts even the basic needs of people. This goes as far as the State removing itself from the provision or even regulation of the provision of life essentials: water, food, housing. Neoliberalism sells itself as Meritocratic yet strongly defends anti-meritocratic mechanisms such as private elite schools (were it's money that buys entry, not merit) and which you can see from the experience in the UK (which has been doing it thus for almost a century) just serve to entrench power in the same segments of society across generations and collapse Social Mobility to pretty much zero.
• In other words, Neoliberalism wants to reduce to meaniglessness the Power within Democracy which is controlled by people elected via a system were all citizens have roughly the same power, leaving only a single Power in action, that of Money whose control is so uneven that some people have billions of times more power than others, an inballance only beaten by that of Kings vs Peasants in the deepest darkest of Middle Age's Feudalism.

The effect is achieved via the capture, subversion and/or nullification of the mechanisms of the State within Democracy rather bloody revolution, and people are kept in their place using techniques from Modern Psychology and Marketing to prey on human cognitive weaknesses (tribalism, information overload, emotion-driven action, familiarity, halo effect and so many others) rather than force (though at times, that too: look at how Obama suppressed Occupy Wall Street) but ultimatelly it anchores itself on the same principles.

And if you look around with a different perspective you see a lot of the things from John Oliver's segment:

• The institution which is the Press was not taken over by the State using force, it was simply bought with money.
• The Judiciary in the US has long been subverted by the Political power nominating the Supreme Court Judges, breaking the independence between these supposedly independent pillars of Democracy
• The demonised enemy has changed over time, in order: communists, middle easterns, terrorists, the other half of the US (yeah, the Identity Wars really perfectly allow both "sides" to give their bases a perfect enemy on the bases of the other side).
• The Projection of Strength is the US' hyper-nationalism and militarism (cultivated by both "sides"), with near constant military interventions abroad, both under Republican and Democrat presidents.

From this pespective the fight in the US is not between leftwing and rightwing, not even close, it's between Oligarchy and Fascism. It is thus unsurprising how so many Americans feel powerless: they are powerless as the fight is really between two different models of Power were wealthy elites control everything and hence it's mainly a fight between two side of the elites were the rest are but pawns.