You’d think a hegemony with a 100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players, would have some mechanism that would prevent itself from throwing down it’s key ideology.
Is it really that the president is all that decides about the future of democracy itself? Is 53 out of 100 senate seats really enough to make country fall into authoritarian regime? Is the army really not constitutionally obliged to step in and save the day?
I’d never think that, of all places, American democracy would be the most volatile.
The 2A was so that the Federal gov’t wouldn’t have a standing army. That went out the window really quickly when a Federal force under the first president had to be raised to put down the Whiskey Rebellion. At the time, the 2A should have been repealed or rephrased at least. Don’t forget that one of the jobs of the US gov’t, as defined in The Constitution (which admittedly, doesn’t mean much now when we have a president who is clearly does not qualify under the 14th Amendment), is to put down domestic violence.