Here's another take...

...

"'Our contemporaries,' Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1840, in the second volume of 'Democracy in America,' 'are constantly excited by two conflicting passions; they want to be led, and they wish to remain free.' The result was a peculiarly American compromise, an abiding tension between state power and popular sovereignty.

"Tocqueville had faith that Americans could keep the two in balance. At the same time, he warned against a slide into 'democratic despotism.' The people, he wrote, might someday vote to cede their power and place the government 'in the hands of an irresponsible person or body of persons.' Having witnessed the rise of American democracy, Tocqueville also, it seems, foretold its decline."
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This is the opening of a recent review of Rachel Maddow's book, Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism, by Jeff Shesol. Is There Fascist DNA in the U.S. Body Politic? (nytimes.com, October 15, 2023). Shesol also reviewed Heather Cox Richardson's Democracy Awakening

I just finished reading Prequel. It's quite a mad story; I'd always been aware of the America First movement and that some leading lights in American culture before WWII had been antisemites, but the depth of detail in the story as Maddow recounts it is fascinating. The research reflects someone who has a doctoral degree in poli sci from Oxford, while the writing style often reflects someone who has a TV show.

Apparently the German government under Hitler, by the mid-30s, had figured that they could easily spread a lot of pro-German and pro-Nazi propaganda in the U.S. due to our very broad freedom of speech along with the ability to have friends of friends of friends of Germany persuade pliable elected people (U.S. senators like Lundeen and Wheeler) to offer their franking privileges for what seems to have been tens of millions of pieces of German propaganda mailed across the U.S. Weird.

Other choice details: Henry Ford wrote a 94-installment series excoriating the Jews--I mean, a lot of the stuff is loony-bin worthy. And Charles Lindbergh, the hero aviator, as late as 1940 was urging audiences that the U.S. should form a partnership with Hitler so that freedom could last far into the future. Ha...ha.

The parallels with what's happening today are plain, and were, I'm sure, expressly highlighted by Maddow. A big sedition trial that started during the war was dragged out by hundreds of defense motions; supporters of the elected officials who'd offered substantial aid in the dissemination of German propaganda cried that the trial was a "witch hunt"; and the defendants whined that the government was using the Department of Justice for political ends, so FDR and his Jew cronies could stay in power forever. One of the defendants, in 1944, entered the courthouse making a Nazi salute and saying "Sieg Heil" to the reporters; probably trolling them, but who knows.

At any rate, I am quite confident that millions of Americans would be fine with Trump as POTUS declaring martial law, suspending Congress, and appointing Steve Bannon as special prosecutor against all Trump's foes.