Legislative, Executive, Judicial, doesn't matter: everything since 9/11, and likely much longer before in unofficial capacities, has been the steady groundwork for complete overturn of civil and constitutional rights indefinitely ... and therefore permanently.
Gulf of Tonkin / Reichstag Fire as justification. Secret courts, enemy combatants, warrantless monitoring, disappearing of people, dismantling of institutional memory. Databases, social networks, graph inference of behavior, secret lists. Massive prison infrastructure with no regard for cruel and unusual punishment.
This is the imminent great filter: not some nuclear armageddon. It's staring at us in China -- the human race placed under boot, and everyone stops having kids. A couple generations, and a civilization essentially disappears.