The trouble is that you cannot understand the freedom we have in America. You think we can play around socialism and keep that same freedom that you just take for granted. Socialism IS authoritarian. Democrats, especially now that the DSA is taking over the party, are far more authoritarian than even the worst (or from your point of view, the best) Republicans.
The left created that bogus scale where they distanced themselves from fascists and nazis by saying they are the far right. What kind of scale puts at its extremes the exact same thing? It is a joke. It is pointless. If you want to show any kinds of differences then you put complete opposites at each end of the scale. Nazis and fascists can be to the right of socialists and communists but all of them are at the authoritarian, no individual liberty end of one side of the scale. The extreme on the other end of the scale is no government and absolute freedom of the individual.
That means as much as your ideological predecessors tried to distance themselves from the ideologies they once loved, that scale just does not work. All four authoritarian ideologies are at the far left.
Where conservatives are is just a few steps to the left of no government and absolute freedom. Libertarians are in between conservatives and anarchists.
Democrats were at the edge of the authoritarian side but now that the DSA is controlling the party the left is not authoritarian.
This is now no longer a fight between two American ideas of how to govern this nation. This is now a fight between tyranny and freedom and you are NOT on the freedom side. It is time to wake and look at those chains you wish to put around our necks and notice them on your own necks.