The current episode of Past, Present, Future is about the current strongman politics trend. Ayse Zarokol defines strongman politics are orthogonal to authoritarianism. A strongman ruler is often authoritarian and fascist, but the defining aspect is that they make the government a personal extension of themselves. If you have an argument with Trump, then the government goes after you.
Arguably, Richard J. Daley was a strongman ruler in a non-authoritarian government. Conversely, she says that China before Xi was a non-strongman authoritarian government. (Xi is making the Chinese government all about him in a way that, say, Deng Xiaoping never would have.)
Around the 26-minute mark, Ayse Zarokol notes that "it took Erdogan, it took him two decades, what Trump has taken Trump literally months to do."
Also, she says "I think people that think that midterms are going to turn this around are deluding themselves."
Later, she talks about college-level political education in the US, in which students are taught, sure there are problems here and there, but the US always bounces back. "In the United States, people have too much faith in the system." David Runciman mentioned that he wrote an article titled
The US Is Not Hungary, and now he's not sure that it's valid anymore.
I don't want to bum anyone out, but this strikes me as an explanation for the inactivity I see from US liberals, including me sometimes. They're all waiting for things to bounce back, they way "it always does."