The article in The Bulwark a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned it when I first saw it; it has been on my mind every day ever since.

Voting for a fascist even once changes the voter. There is a psychological gulf that is spanned. Our brains are supple, we're infinitely creative in "Yes, but" rationalizations, our souls are mutable, our identities too, we can go from one identity, Miss Smith, to another, Mrs. Jones, from Democrat to Republican. A person can go back, most of the time, but still...Behavior can mutate our identity, and identity does change our behavior. It's still reversible. But still.

Identity causes surface and psychological friction with our behavior and vice versa. We behave in some conformity to our identity. "Tell me what a man does and I'll tell you who he is." Once we change there is some inertia to stay in our new place, at least for awhile, and crossing a great divide makes it psychologically easier to do it again, to continue voting for fascists, to keep committing prostitution or adultery, whatever it is. There's a first time for everything--it doesn't have to be the last time and often isn't--but first times are times, they have the weight, whatever that may be, of other first times at least. 

I don't know about Argentina or Brazil or Hungary or or or. I know about Weimar and Nazi Germany and I know about Trumpist America. Voting for a fascist even once is behavior so fundamental that it may be a one-way bridge, like virginity, on which we cannot reverse course.