This seems like a good place to link Robert Evans BTB episode: “How Conservatism Won” in which “Robert sits down with David Bell to discuss how a consortium of rich failsons got together to fund a network of right wing think tanks and shift American culture in a fun new direction. (note: it was not actually fun at all).”

Our current situation really is the culmination of almost 70 years of rightwing efforts. They’ve mobilized their base and that base turn outs to city councils to set up Nativity scenes and school board meetings to ban books. There are dozens of “grassroots movements” with varying interests, (some funded by shady thinktanks but some funded by low level true believers). At the end of the day they all show up to vote for their guy(s) to push their party the direction they want, it’s worked and that party has mainstreamed extremism. Their judges and policy wonks are all Foundation Vetted and Approved ideologues.

The left lost, now is the time. Get a couple guns (a long one and a short one) and learn how to use them. Learn some basic first aid, you really just need to know how to stabilize someone. Start networking with like-minded people in your communities. The police will not protect us, they’ve proven they’ll happily club senior citizens to the ground and shoot any protesters in the face with rubber bullets while escorting a rightwing murderer to safety.

Iran was a secular, liberal state until almost 1980 when they (mostly legitimately) elected an Islamist theocracy; it could happen here.

tl;dl the rich hated FDRs New Deal and immediately set to work to undo everything he did and have been pretty successful, it’ll likely take decades of work to undo the damage that’s been done IF “the left” can wake up.