American Democracy has had to save itself many times in the past century already

There have always been some people who were crazy. For example, people were pacifists mostly in the U.S. until Pearl Harbor on December 7th 1941. Things didn't change enough for Americans to want revenge until  several thousand  American military personnel  died that day in Hawaii.

General MacArthur wanted to keep going all the way into China instead of stopping at the North Korean border. In fact, he was removed from command because he wouldn't stop pushing forward towards China during the Korean War there.

We have American Soldiers to this day on the north Korean border between North Korea and south Korea since June 25th 1950 until right now.

Even the Civil Rights Bill wouldn't have been passed by president Johnson if they weren't doing it partly because of President Kennedy who had been assassinated a year before.

Senator Joseph McCarthy reminds me a lot of Trump in some ways by his vilifying the leftists in this country and destroyed the careers (especially in Hollywood) of many leftist people in the movie business in the early 1950s until he was drummed out of office (hopefully like Trump will be too from ever holding a political office ever again).

9-11 was another time when planes were used as missiles to attack the U.S. and Bush II invaded Iraq and then Afghanistan too. We are still there today by the way in Afghanistan around 20 years later.

The difference today is we just had a president in Trump who doesn't believe in democracy and wants to be an American Hitler instead.  This is the difference now because we are being attacked from within, which in it's own way is harder to withstand than an attack from without, especially for a democracy.