Will Trump break American democracy?

In the decades after World War II, a big overriding question animated a large number of American social scientists: How could something like Nazi Germany have happened in a seemingly modern, advanced democracy? And if it could happen there, could something like it happen here too?

The answers were somewhat dispiriting. Americans, as a whole, were not all that tolerant. Many had authoritarian leanings. And ordinary people were capable of remarkablecruelty.

To take the totality of the findings, it seemed remarkable that despite the just-below-the-surface potential for authoritarianism, American politics did not dissolve into a maelstrom of illiberal intolerance and violence.