J. Waterman Wise.

If fascism comes, it will not be identified with any “shirt” movement, nor with an “insignia,” but it will probably be “wrapped up in the American flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution.

Weeeell… They’ve got those $50 red baseball caps. That kinda counts…?

The ratchet effect is real and is what eroded the Nordic Model here in Sweden; right-wing parties pushed everything towards privatization, corruption, arbetslinjen, segregation and exploitation, and the left-wing (in name only) enshrined all changes as the new baseline. (And gasoline populism being embraced by both sides.) Just like a ratchet.

I don’t think it’s teleological; it’s the emergent result of processes like the electoral system itself and how money does influence policy. It’s not that it’s Pelosi and Granholm trying to speedrun the world into an elephant graveyard and more that it’s a broken system with perverse incentives.

The legendary “Daisy Girl” political ad from the 1964 LBJ campaign.

I always thought the first few pages in Uncanny X-Men #238 was a reference to this (along with all the more obvious Maddy Pryor references like “Gone to America”).