Certainly doesn't make us immune, that's for sure. But much as we enjoy deriding and demeaning the american electorate, it does a fair job of ignoring punditry, hero worship, extremism of any sort and opinions of foreigners in general. Thus, I doubt that any president could fool enough people for long enough to effect a fundamental change in gov, much as I'd like that (if it went my way). If you look at our history, we survived some real *********s like Jackson, Harding, LB Johnson, and Nixon despite their darkest ambitions. part of the reason is the one I alluded to earlier, the "canary in the coalmine" singing dissidents. Some faction or other is always seeing some conspiracy or other to take over gov. the chances of a plot succeeding, given the constant surveillance by professional paranoiacs, is very slim. But it is not immunity. I completely agree that 'it can't happen here' is an invitation to dictatorship. It nearly happened once before. In the 1860's. Under Lincoln. he claimed suspending civil law was justifed and it wasn't overturned for years afterword. In the meanwhile, he jailed many newspapermen, politicians (even deporting a House member), and others without trial or habeas corpus. Now we (most of us) revere the man. Go figure.

Concerning your modification of my analogy, I cannot imagine a scenario as you indicated happening, given the level of attention that I pay to my kids. Eternal vigilence, being the price of freedom.