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Maybe Sweden is different. Here in the states, we are tolerating problems far worse than Sweden ever had. Wokeness hasn't diminished much if any.
The major blue cities have a murder rate that is more than 10x what Sweden has. And the public schools in our major blue cities have been terrible forever. San Francisco public schools are less than 10% white now as everyone either sends their kids to private school or moves to the suburbs.
Yet these American blue cities are not "lurching" (a mild slur by the way) to the right, far from it. In the past decades they have become woker and woker. If anything, it is the suburbs and rural areas that are becoming more conservative, despite having many fewer of the problems created by lack of rules enforcement.
Edit: I think I might have caused some confusion. By "slur" I mean that lurch is being used as a slur here. "My outgroup moves like a drunk or a zombie". I do not mean that there is anything wrong with the word lurch.
Among average liberal suburban normies in the US, one generally accepted narrative regarding political history is that Republican administrations between 1968-92 have committed a horrific, unspeakable, terribly evil etc. crime against BIPOC by enacting a policy of mass incarceration of African-American (and, to a much lesser extent, Latino) young men in the name of the 'war on drugs' and 'law and order' in order to pander to the racist sentiments of hwhite garbage humans. (As far as I know, nothing of this sort has ever happened in Sweden.) Therefore there's no chance at all of any politician making the kamikaze decision of trying to drum up support for law and order.
I do think that the spectre of Donald Trump allows people to tolerate a higher level of crime and dysfunction than they otherwise would.
People weigh their own safety vs. the social undesirability of voting Republican. In our current epoch, the surge in murders and crime hasn't been enough to overcome the very strong social undesirability of Donald Trump. So they continue to vote for progressives despite a worry that things aren't going that well. Because the alternative of a "literal fascist dictatorship" is worse.
I don't think it's social undesirability at this point. The main issue a lot of people (myself included) have with Trump is the fact that he is likely to bring about huge systemic instability. Most people who have some vested interest in the current amalgamation of systems and institutions in the US are very reluctant to support the sentiment of "it's all rotten, tear it all down" coming out of the populist right these days. Conservatism used to be about avoiding rapid change due to the possibility of unforeseen consequences. Now it seems to embrace it.
It would be nice if critics of "huge systemic instability" had a general theory of what "huge systemic instability" actually consisted of. For an example, weaponizing the federal security services against political opponents seems like something that should be pretty damn destabilizing, but somehow it's never accounted such. Likewise, a coordinated campaign to foment serious racial conflict, culminating in massive outbreaks of organized political violence should probably give one pause. One of the most thoroughly black-pilling moments I can remember is when, during the BLM riots, one of the moderate blue regulars here opined how they just wanted Trump gone so things could calm down.
You changed too much, and now our trajectory is both blind and ballistic. We repeatedly warned you not to do that, and you either ignored or mocked us. You burned the stability, and now you complain that we're not sacrificing our values to replace what you willfully destroyed. Conservatives are realists; they aren't going to pretend that things aren't as they plainly are. Rapid change has been happening for years now, and further rapid change is inevitable. The only question is what the nature of that change is to be, whether some new stable system can be salvaged from the rapidly-disintegrating wreck of our previous construction.
Okay: WWIII is plausible soon, and SJ is able and willing to form a fifth column. So, avoid people that will especially inspire SJ to do this.
Yes, this is spineless pragmatism that rewards their treasonousness. I know. I'm past caring. Hold on for now, root-and-branch later.
The most plausible path I see to WWIII is internal strife boiling over inside America, fatally compromising its ability to enforce the Pax Americana, resulting in a lot of countries lunging for the cheese while the cat's busy dying of a cerebral hemorrhage.
Granting unlimited social and political license to an irrational, irresponsible, and highly aggressive faction of ideological zealots seems like one of the best ways possible to cause internal strife to boil over inside America. Those of us taking the beating can see that you are compromising our values, interests and welfare in a vain effort to secure your own. Why should we not return the favor?
A Second US Civil War or something close, with the government in shambles, both sides have nukes, at least one side is getting foreign aid and lots of it? Yeah, that could do it.
I don’t think we’d be looking at a second US civil war, I think we’d be looking at balkanization with predictable conflicts to either determine the boundaries of the big players’ SOI’s or adjudicate resource issues previously solved by the federal government(looking at you, California water supply), probably with insurgencies in red areas of blue states.
There might be foreign aid flowing in but you’re not looking at a two-side civil war.
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