I agree with you.
It is remarkable when people experience bone-deep renunciation/repentance --- what theologians call "metanoia." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metanoia_(psychology)
Speaking of "bone-deep..."
There isn't a bone in Trump's body that doesn't proclaim self-interested, seditious criminality. He has been charged on 91 counts in 4 different jurisdictions, and even as I write this comment, Malignant Messiah's ass is being handed to him in a New York courtroom.
Meantime, all his suck-ups can do is claim "Deep State!"
Check out Erich Fromm's great book, first published in English as "Escape from Freedom," but more accurately titled "Die Angst vor der Freiheit," the German title that translates, "Fear of Freedom." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_Freedom
Fascists cannot deal with the complex issues that freedom -- especially democratic freedom -- brings into focus, and so they flee to the arms of fascists who will take freedom away from them.
For example...
Cult-worshipping fascists think freedom is epitomized by flag-waving, when a core question posited by freedom, is whether flag-waving has anything to do with freedom, or if flag-waving distills to a simple, safe, no-muss, no-fuss "token behavior" that apes freedom in order to keep real freedom at bay.
In order to make them feel good about their stridently proclaimed patriotism, which -- almost always -- is "the official story" behind fakriotism.
Anything like real freedom wrestles with difficult questions in a rich, deep, searching context where education and learning are uppermost, not dimwitted attacks on school libraries to remove any book that requires research, dialogue and thought.
According to Trump cultists, learning requires prior stonewalling of unsettling thoughts so that simple, streamlined, unchallenging anodynes occupy the entire field of vision.
All across the nation, "Mothers for Liberty" brings to mind the horror of Nazi book-burning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning
Consider this litmus test...
People who embrace free, open-minded research and learning -- as opposed to self-enclosed, cult-leader adoration -- will at least look at the links provided in this post.
And they will look at these links because they WANT to learn.
On the other hand, authoritarian-absolutists' "boner" reflex is to hunker down in the dim, deep trench where they store their middle school slogans and uncomplicated apothegms -- trigger-happy at every turn.
