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A major fear going back to the days of Jefferson and Washington of course has been a President becoming too good at minipulating the system and too powerful and makes himself dictator. I honestly do not see that as a rational fear in the modern era, once upon a time it was a much more legitimate fear in the pre-Information Age. FDR or let's say FJR his younger, healthier and much more power hungry and ambitious made up cousin I think may have been able to make himself into a dictator in all but name.

Let's say the Great Depression and the economic desperation it brought with it allowed for the building of his own large CCP force which the FJR has slowly indoctrinated to see him as their savior and the countries savior and they are slowly trained and armed all in the name of reducing unemployment thanks to public opinion as long as the force was sold as a jobs program he could have successfully told the SC to piss off like Andrew Jackson did if they object. After Pearl Harbor in the name of national security Marshal Law is declared and the government takes total control of the media. Suddenly many high level American governmental and business officials are reported to have been killed by German and Jap spies that have infiltrated the country.

The President's ultra loyal body of several million people he gave jobs to and had indoctrinated to see him as America's savior are gathered outside Congress as the President 'convinces' Congress to hand over legislative powers to the President so he can rule by edict 'for the rest of the war' along with ending the power of the SC to judge the constitutionality of actions.

Mass internment camps get used not just for Americans of Japanese ancestry, but political prisoners as well. As long as FJR isn't virulently racist America doesn't become Nazi Germany, but one has to question if it would have been that hard if he was to put his loyal paramilitaries in charge of the detainees and use them as forced labor and even start killing them eventually after they are sufficenly dehumanized, which wouldn't have taken long. The camps are put in Alaska and mainstream America thanks to total media control knows little to nothing about it other then threats to the state are there.

I really do wonder if that could have happened in the 30s and 40s if you had a young charismatic very power hungry individual take the Presidency who had FDR's political skills thanks mainly to the desperation of the time, the war and to the fact that controlling information that the masses see and hear was so much easier back then as there were massively few news sources.

In the Information Age not so much. Even Putin is having a hard time getting away with the same level of authoritarianism that was practiced in Russia 30 years ago. The fear of a too powerful executive today becoming dictator in all other then name died in recient decades in my view.

But, once upon a time I have to wonder if under the stress of a Great Depression and World Wars that under bad leadership American democracy might not have survived.
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