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.
The funny thing is that so much of it is based on the idea that everyone involved is going to be on their best behaviour, working for the good of the country, compromising with their opponents, and so-on. And, then it all falls apart as soon as one person realizes that they get an advantage as soon as they simply ignore the norms.
Also, don’t forget that there was less than a century between the revolution and the civil war. If your brand new form of government is so poor that a significant fraction of your population thinks a civil war is preferable to resolving things through that system, your system isn’t very good.
The civil war wasn’t about the form of government.
The civil war was due to the fact that the disputes over what should and shouldn’t be allowed couldn’t be resolved within the framework the government provided.
It was about State’s rights…
State’s rights suchs as the right to own slaves
In fact that was the only right they cared about.