So an underappreciated (at least by me) aspect of the road to fascism is that there is apparently a large percentage of the population who don't realize how dire the situation is because they don't want it to be that bad. Because it would make them uncomfortable if the country they love is in that bad of a situation.
We've all known about and talked about the two main groups that get focused on that lead to authoritarian states. There's the group that loves it and wants it, the fascists. And there's the group that just doesn't care enough about anything as long as they have their comforts, which while they suddenly disappear once it's too late they're still there on most of the journey. This group is the morons. A third group in the modern version is the team sport politics dunderheads who will believe anything their team says. We all know about that newer third group.
I had not realized how big the fourth group is. Fairly intelligent people who simply can't believe what's happening so they don't believe what's happening. "But how can that be? This is my country, we don't do that." We've got a few around here in that group for sure.
And while @immamac doesn't like it, that group has to be woken up. Kind coddling isn't going to make them understand, because they inherently and deep within their minds don't want to understand.