No Stupid Questions

The Constitution assumes the people through the ballot box or through protest would clean up any issues like that

It has impeachment. The list of reasons for impeachment are (quite possibly intentionally) vague. But it has to be done through Congress.

The problem is he won the election.

The vote is the final check and balance.

49% of Voters are either sympatico or stupid.

We really only have the Second Amendment. I am now on a list.

LOL give me a break. This (undemocratic) state was literally founded by slavemasters, the original proto-nazis, so they could violently maintain their racist privilege. Ofc there's no law against it.

Everyone has been bought and paid for https://lemmy.world/comment/13431373

I’d never think that, of all places, American democracy would be the most volatile

Ignore the political system and look at the economic system. The US is capitalist and as it turns out- capitalism is not mutually exclusive with fascism.

If a human being lives long enough, he will eventually develop cancer. It's simply a natural physical consequence of repeated cell division. Eventually there's some mutation that leads to a chain reaction. The cancer spreads enough and there's no going back. Capitalism, similarly, will always inevitably embrace fascism.

Marx got it wrong. He believed that the workers, realizing their position as class consciousness increases, would inevitably revolt against the power structure. The reality is more depressing.

Capitalism has cycles of crisis. Sometimes the economy is doing good which leaves the workers content. Sometimes the economy is doing bad. The problem is when the economy is doing bad coincides with some other set of crisis, the combination of events radicalizes the workers. This part Marx predicted. However he was mistaken about human nature.

Really, our problem started back in 2008. The global economy never fully recovered. Interest rates were kept low in a desperate attempt to increase spending to keep the boat from tipping. Then COVID pumped up inflation to historic levels- supply chain shortages wrecked chaos. After that, the Russian invasion of Ukraine pushed up inflation even higher. Prices go up but wages lag behind.

Workers, naturally, become more radicalized- as Marx predicted. The issue is Marx was too optimistic about human nature. Humans as a whole are fearful herd animals. They need a shepherd to point somewhere. And eventually, inevitably, some megalomaniac with a vision will take advantage of a vulnerable system and point somewhere. In the 1930s it was to the Jews and the communists. Today, it's the illegals and "wokeism".

All this to say that this shouldn't be surprising. Left wing voices have been warning about this for a long time.

Hitler didn't take power democratically. Neither did Mussolini or Franco. They each found cracks in how liberal democracy worked in their respective countries. Those cracks were usually the places where the system was decidedly undemocratic, which in those three cases, was generally something where the old nobles still had some power and they lined up behind fascists to save them from leftists.

America never had nobles, but it does have plenty of cracks in its liberal democracy to be exploited by fascists.

So to answer your question simply, no, there are no instruments to fix this. Congress can potentially either reign Trump in with legislation, or even impeach him, but I don't expect either one to happen. If the GOP can be swept out of Congress in 2026, then we can maybe start to fix some things without resorting to extralegal methods. Even that is only a starting point.

I do know for sure that we can't go back to the old trajectory as if Trump was just an outlier.

America's vaunted "checks and balances" are, in the end, just smoke and mirrors to lie to the population and hide the fact that American institutions give way too much power to the president and there are no institutional controls to make the president behave.

Second amendment

The US empire chooses to ally with any group who opposes Russia or uses mineral/oil wealth as significant public welfare enhancement instead of enriching their rulership or privatizing for cheap bribes to US national champions, and not being a US weapons customer. This already makes the US empire a demonic evil fascist force. It calling apartheid ethnostates of Ukraine and Israel "great democracies", and all elections that go against it "rigged" is an ultra fascist view. Control over colonies media is control over their democracy, and control over their people to ensure subservience of allies. Internally, to US, there is always money for the empire and the oligarchy, never for people.

The veneer of democracy and "rules based world order allies" is a BS that helps with its demonism. But removing the veneer to demand more tribute from colonies, and Americans is not change. It simply removes the emperor's veil/clothing. If voting could change anything, it would be illegal.

Trump can help Americans realize this. But if you were praising US democracy/values before this, you simply were not paying attention closely enough.

Is the army really not constitutionally obliged to step in and save the day?

The constitution is no protection against the Army. A military coup does not necessarily mean a more militarist US, or anti-American, anti-pluralist/liberty government. Asking/supporting the military to depose corrupt leaders should be based on that corruption, not looking up whether a nation's constitution permits it (they never do).

a hegemony with a 100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players

Your proof of this is... what?