The US is in a unique situation in which the President has tossed all illusions of regularity out the window, and checks from Congress and SCOTUS have been completely nullified. (Though Congress is shifting as Trump is making Republicans unelectable.) The federal government has been literally captured by corporate and oligarch interests.

Before Trump, the US was not a democracy -- not really -- but it pretended to be one, and did so convincingly for a large enough number of voters that little was done to assure rights were preserved. (For the record, a report from Oxford quantifies the US as behaving like an oligarchy with some democratic features.)

And after the 9/11 attacks and during the International War on Terror, a lot of rights were quietly stripped away, since everyone was afraid of foreign Islamist extremist terrorists... completely ignoring the radical far-right home-grown terrorists we have. The FBI's disinterest in white supremacists through the George W. Bush and Obama eras is conspicuous.

Most people don't realize the Bill of Rights has been gutted until they're on the business end of a police encounter. And by then it's too late.

Anyway, depending on the results and aftermath of the midterm elections this November, the US might pull back towards democracy the way it has at prior points in its history, or go full Third Reich.

It depends on how pissed we are without food and healthcare and an ongoing war that's being poorly conducted. But maybe the big propaganda machine will keep us wanting to own the libs and hate on trans folk (and concentrating and torturing immigrants) for a while longer.