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.
I don’t think they’re thinking that much about it. The alt right of today isn’t a secessionist movement so using the Confederates as a basis for understanding what they do is, I think, not very productive. They’re trying to take over America, not secede from it, and as they haven’t come out and said they want to get rid of democracy and turn the US into a fascist dictatorship, even in Germany you wouldn’t be able to use state force against them.
I mean yeah, and then? They’re statues; they’re ugly and they glorify slavers but they’re not really doing any immediate harm. Not to say they shouldn’t be taken down, but they don’t fit in with the scale we’re discussing here.