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.
You talk about amendments as if they couldn’t be amended.
They could be, but that would require another amendment, or in other words either a 2/3 majority in both houses or 2/3 of all state legislatures. You’d never get that many people to give up their right to free speech, because as soon as you put one kind of speech on the table all speech is on the table. Would you trust Trump with that kind of power?