Hard disagree. The Republican politicians are not leading the masses to dark places, the masses are pulling the politicians to greater extremes and the politicians are holding them back, because they have a greater understanding of the consequences than the average voter.

Ask the average Republican if undocumented I’m immigrants should all be deported, and they will tell you yes. That’s 14 million people, and the only way to accomplish it is to build up ICE to 5 times it’s current size, and do what they are doing in Minneapolis in every city in America. What they want requires fascism.

Ask them if abortion is murder and they will say yes. They don’t care about the women that are dying from pregnancy complications, the children that will be orphaned, the families that have been torn apart because the treatment for many conditions is abortion of the pregnancy and if it’s murder you can get treatment.

Ask them if environmental regulations are too stiff and should be rolled back so the economy can grow, and they will say yes, they don’t care about the ecosystems that will be lost forever, the diseases that people will suffer from pollution, or the rights of communities to avoid those harms.

What holds them back is that individuals don’t all want the same things, so the party pulls in different directions, because some people understand the disaterous implications of a specific policy, so they don’t support that particular cruelty, but they don’t question the wider ideology, and the basic ideology is a death cult.

What you get over time is generational frustration that the corrupt politicians refuse to do what is necessary and support for more and more extreme individuals in office. People that hatch plans like the federalist society, to corrupt the courts, and project 2025, to destroy the administrative state and consolidate power into the executive, and congresspeople who will support the descent into violent fascism, because that’s what is required to give the masses what they demand.

Democracy slows down the process, but the American voters will get the cruelty, suffering, and death they demand eventually.