People like to think the pendulum will always swing back. That is because of survivor bias. They have always seen it swing back. Every fallen civilization believed in the pendulum theory too, until the last one. You can't magically remake our forests. We are just stupid.
This is kind of one of the points I try to make. All of the damage that is being done right now is very hard to fix when we have sane people back in power (if that happens). It’s 100x easier to destroy than build, and we are seeing it happen in real time.
Also, attempts to undo the damage will be painted as extreme, whether it’s rehiring / recreating the agencies that were destroyed or prosecuting the crazy corruption and seizing funds.
Not only that, but when you do fix it, voters will forget how bad things were last term and re-elect the people that caused the damage. It is extraordinarily rare in modern times for the party in power to not change when the incumbent president isn't running. It's also very rare for a party that controls the presidency to keep the house/senate after midterms.
It's easier to deny bad things than it is to face problems with only bad solutions. And anyone who tries to point out the reality will be called a defeatist.
I have had many discussions over the decades, presenting hypotheticals with no good answer--and I have found very few people who would even try to address the scenario as presented. They're always "misunderstanding" it in some fashion which allows a good outcome--and such "misunderstanding" can never be corrected because they are unwilling to contemplate the hard choice even when the choice is the best for all parties. (The assault team has taken the terrorist base--but there's a little kid reaching for his bottle that's holding down the deadman on the nuke. Nobody can reach him in time, do you shoot?)
