Thank you for your perspective, Justin, but the basis of my thinking is not going in the direction where you are going.

The voting system is paramount in explaining where a nation is going or not-going.

In a two-party nation like the USA, we have an elimination game going on with winner-take-all. In Sweden, there is no elimination game in the voting booth.

Where in Sweden the majority of the voters is directly linked to the majority of the decisions by the government, in the USA that governmental majority decision is supported directly by 30% of the voters only. The missing 20% got eliminated in the voting booth.

Having just Red and Blue does make the USA a strong nation, but it also makes it a nation that does not deliver to a large part of its society, frustration builds up, and people vote even more extreme than they personally desire. Because they cannot vote Yellow, Green or Orange, they vote more extreme (so Red becomes an unnatural Orange Party, for instance).

When the voting booth turns voters into haves and have-nots, then we find ourselves in a fascist-leaning nation. I am not saying that the USA is fascist, but that really depends on the quality of what our politicians put in place. If they deliver We The People, then we have a centrist nation. If they deliver We-The-Majority then we have a right-leaning nation. And this is exactly where things are not going well. Our politicians are not doing all that much that fits We The People.

Abortion was put in place by foreign governments with proportional voting (full representation, everyone can point to the person or party they themselves voted for), decades ago. Abortion got put in place with often the lowest abortion rates in the world to show for. When it got dealt with decades ago, it ended being a political issue.

Here?

Our politicians did nothing. They had the Supreme Court make a decision, and then there was a subsequent political/legal undermining of that decision. Things are unresolved still today because our politicians did nothing.

Gun regulation?

It is amazing how little is regulated when it comes to guns. The majority way larger than just the majority of people want better gun regulation. The result? Sitting on hands, frolicking in the margins.

That inability to act (except where the interests of the political elite are concerned), that is what turns this into a right-leaning nation. The inaction is the fascist part because it aids a specific elite and not society as a whole.

The United States is a right-leaning nation.