politics

I just can’t understand how it got so bad, so quickly. Relatively speaking.

It's not too different from other fascist takeovers. Hitler and Mussolini went from being jokes to seizing dictatorial control in a relatively short time. Their rise was spurred by the failures of liberal style governments to adequately tamp down the excesses of the capital owners, along with other economic factors.

To a historian, the rise of Fascism in the US probably wouldn't be too surprising. We had a popular Nazi movement here in the 30's that was clamoring for power. That collapsed due to their leader embezzling funds, and it's successors being imprisoned under the espionage act during WWII.

But as for why it's happening again, it starts with FDR finally implementing major economic reforms that provided desperately worker and union protections, high taxes on the wealthy, and social security. Those actions were directly responsible for ending the gilded age as well as finally giving the working class a sense of hope and that life could actually get better (at least... If you weren't a minority, life still sucked for them, hence the civil rights movement a few decades later).

However, starting in the 70's, conservative and liberal leaders have consistently and slowly whittled away all of those working class gains from the 30's to the 60's.

• 70's: Regulations on businesses and corporate tax rates are relaxed, and wages start to fall behind inflation despite higher productivity.
• 80's: Unions are once again being busted in the under Reagan, and right-to-work laws in conservative states allow businesses to skirt unions. Union membership declines.
• 90's: Liberal leaders do little to fix anything in the 90's when they were in power. Unions continue to bleed members, wages stagnate.
• 2000's: Obamacare (affordable care act) passes. It ensures people with pre-existing conditions are able to purchase health insurance (they could be denied before, so if you had cancer and didn't already have health insurance, you and your family would go bankrupt). Overall it's a shitty band-aid when universal healthcare is desperately needed so workers can actually attempt to unionize without having to fear losing their health insurance if they get fired for doing so. Wages remain stagnant.
• 2010: Citizens united passes in 2010, allowing corporate donors to go on unlimited spending sprees on political campaigns (they were harshly limited before). They pump pro-corporate candidates and senators full of money or non-monetary 'gifts'
• The 2020's: The liberal government does nothing to stop insane housing costs as corporate landlords purchase insane amounts of housing as an investment vehicle, and begin to collude with each other to keep rents unbearably high. Cost of living increases in all areas, with Covid often being an excuse by corporations even after supply chains are restored. The majority of Americans have less than $200 in savings, and would become homeless if they lose their job. Insurance premiums rise to extreme levels in some areas. Most people can barely afford to live, more and more fall into poverty. Less than 10% of US workers are unionized.

Throughout the 90's to the present, we also had hard-right propaganda being allowed to be aired on TV (Fox News is one example), which fermented conspiracy theories for decades to an unfortunately uneducated populace.

All of that set up the perfect environment for a fascist to come in and perform their classic tactics of: blame minorities, promise a bright future, and convince their base that the left is literally evil and that they must be eliminated.

That's glossing over a whole lot, but that's kinda the ultra short version as to how we got here, and why it seemed to rise so quickly.