The people who went along with W's bullshit and accepted the "war on terror" at face value two decades ago share a majority of the blame for paving the path for Trump's bullshit. They sanewashed the Patriot Act and Homeland Security Act when most adults were too scared or angry to think straight
And torture was suddenly within the Overton window even after Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo became household names. Because of a fucking TV show on Fox. The skeleton of the alternate reality MAGA diehards live in was built over decades, Trump just had to add skin and muscle
I feel like you can't argue that fiction doesn't influence reality after that shit with 24. On a related note, any writer who depicts torture as a "necessary evil" and/or an effective way to get reliable information is directly responsible for its normalization in America.