Well, that's exactly it, I'd say.
We used to call it the Slippery Slope but someone changed it to Creeping Incrementalism.
Just like a frog in a pot of water on the stove. Dropped right into boiling water, it would be out so fast that it would hardly be burned but placed in luke-warm water with a flame under it, it'll sit there until it cooks to death.
Sadly, people are the same. No one would accept going from the freedoms we had until 1934 to the nonsense we have today in one fell swoop, but when it's just a bill or two here or there, and amendment or executive order now and then....
A couple of generations later, we don't even know what freedom is and the closest thing we come to an outcry is to negotiate how much more we'll give away.
Still happily answering to the call-sign Peetza.
The problem, as you so eloquently put it, is choice.
He is no fool who gives what he can not keep to gain what he can not lose.
-Jim Eliott, paraphrasing Philip Henry.