I think part of the problem with screaming about fascism is that most people are actually fine with fascism. Discussions about government and its failings follow a very predictable path that is wholly dependent on the civic engagement of my conversational partner: the less engaged they are, the more they want "the president" to cut through the red tape and do what they want. We don't lionize bureaucrats, we lionize leaders.

Tony Judt drew a very different lesson from WWII and the post-war period than Arendt or anyone else: everyone was cool with genocide. Not a single home was returned to a Jew. Nobody tried to make surviving concentration camps welcome. The post-war economic expansion in Europe wasn't driven by dynamism, it was driven by the repossession of the 20% of European economic holdings held by a murdered ethnic sect.

I've voted in every presidential election since Bush V. Clinton and I disagree with your assessment. "A danger to democracy" wasn't on the table until 2020. At the same time, most of those elections were still governed by the Voter Rights Act and most of the candidates were credible legislators - the Left lost their fucking minds over the idea of an actor becoming president but he'd also done two credible terms as governor of California. That said? I (barely) remember discussions around gas rationing in 1979, when inflation was 11%. Reagan won that election 44m-35m, 489-49.