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.
There was also rampant disenfranchisement prior to the election, whatever Trump’s comments about Elon were referring to, and the bomb threats on election day, just to name a few. Maybe it all amounted to literal nothing, maybe it changed the outcome, but I don’t think we’ll ever know. Trump did a fantastic job of priming the country for 8 years to consider claims of election interference to be wild conspiracy theories and made the democratic party unwilling or unable to question anything without sounding like loons, so here we are.