Most people now seem so sure their values are the right ones, and opposition to them is evil, that they are willing, even eager, to see their values enforced. If law fails, then by force.
Each side claims to be the possessors and defenders of “democracy” and “freedom,” while each vows to outlaw what the other promotes, on pain of not just deplatforming and silencing but firing, job blacklisting, debanking, and all the way to imprisonment.
Two dictatorships are on the ballot. Each claims to be the last defense against the final dictatorship, the thousand-year reich of the other.
How does this end?
The whole idea of freedom of conscience, the predecessor to freedom of speech, is that the ideas, by themselves, should be enough to convince people. If the ideas won't do it, either try other people or improve one's ideas.
Most republicans would be satisfied to turn the back the clock fifteen years, not seventy-four as you suggest. This is the problem with the use of a both-sidism model in an asymmetric contest. Republicans don’t care if an adult chooses a trans lifestyle but trying to normalize it in the classroom is something else again. Same with an open border, same with crime, same with absurd democrat values that put the economy in a tailspin. How about democrats threats to individual freedom, apologia for censorship. I was once a Democrat and it took me a lifetime to see what was right in front of my face. I think the basic difference between Rs and Ds is that Rs see government as likely to do more harm than good (as does the constitution) and Ds view government as the lever with which to move the world.