Conversation

To me this is an important clue in the rise of fascism, and it's part of my "hot stove" theory of humanity. The basic version is that people mostly learn not to do dumb things by having bad experiences. So: "fire pretty" -> burnt fingers -> "fire bad!"

Here we have people around old enough to remember polio, so even lickspittles like McConnell find enough backbone to object to making iron lungs great again. But once all the people who experienced the Great Depression were dead, financial regulation started softening. And now that anybody who fought in WW II is dead, many people are all "strongman pretty".