“an overt authoritarian sits in the Oval Office, despite failing to win the endorsement of a majority of American voters.”

Indeed, but perhaps that is why a popular vote for the President is not in our Constitution, and why each state gets to have two senators. Perhaps the founders wanted to prevent the “tyranny of the majority”. Perhaps they saw the US as a federation of nations (as in Federal government?) — not a single nation?

Perhaps they knew that the US was too diverse (as you have proven) and too large for a single controlling government, and wanted most government to occur at the state level — just as the European Union is today.

Perhaps if we were more like the European Unions — a loose federation of independent states — then things would work better. Seems to me that the chances of having an effective social safety nets at a smaller state level would be much greater that trying to do it at the level of the entire United States.

These days, even Europe seems to be splitting apart. Perhaps the stresses of the day are simply too divisive to expect a single policy to work for all of Europe or all of the United States.