You dismiss the critical importance of following the rule of law to the letter. That is perhaps the only lesson we can take is that the American system's greatest power is its rule of law and the constitution.

Many are worried that America's rule of law is also being slowly deteriorated. Once you go down the path of authoritarianism, there is no turning back.

Only in extremely rare cases like South Korea managed to go from authoritarian military junta that came to power, built up its economy by exploiting and oppressing labor movements, , to a democratic state with civil elections only really started in 1993.

Even now South Korea still has problems with following the rule of law. It used to be that the judicial committee is "independent" from the President but recently the Moon administration has completely destroyed this delicate mechanism that was built to prevent authoritarianism. UNHRC openly calls Moon a semi-dictator now and Moon is getting cozy with the CCP and turning its back on the US. Before, this setup allowed for the arrest of past two military dictators that came to power after Park Chung Hee's assassination by his own spy chief. Now it's gone.

What I'm trying to say is that democracy is truly a gift when it works, its noisy, people fight but thats exactly what is needed but it can easily be taken away.

This is what worries me most about Trump, with the recent military manuevers within the country (squad of apache helicopters, troop transports, Trump heading to a USMC command bunker) makes me suggest this is a man with nothing to lose and evrything to gain with the military and police behind him (police were seen removing the barricades in capitol hill rush).

Sure, once you master the art of eradicating ideas of basic human rights and using authoritarian methods to control an entire nation with literally no independent bodies to check the power. You control the banks, the businesses, the army, the judiciary, the media, the internet, literally every sphere of a society. It becomes an easy peasy thing to do what you say is worth learning.

Our government has the ability to do the same in the US. What's lacking is not ability. It's lawfulness and a consensus of what the goal should be. In China there is little need for lawfulness and certainly much less need than in the U.S. for consensus.

I think you have a more constrained view of what is contained within the word "ability" than I do.

The problem with the US is that the class interests of those whose consensus is important in lawmaking is aligned with the interests of the ultra-wealthy.

Nor do I buy into the mythos that "lawfulness" is something universally applied in the United States. Laws, procedure, delay always play a large part when the interests of people with large capital are threatened, but lawlessness is the norm in many relations that impact ordinary people, like that weird clocking in rule that your boss at your retail job has instituted that is actually illegal under labor law or when the Federal gov't decides they will no longer enforce redlining law by going undercover to investigate racial discrimination.

Lawfulness can most often be found in the U.S. where both sides have vigorous legal representation. There are still miscarriages of justice in those cases, but it is not the norm. Of course, big corporations always have vigorous legal representation, so lawfulness is basically a given when it comes to legal disagreements between them and the government.

Only as a cautionary tale. A government that can silence a billionaire or take away his company for something short of a clear cut crime is too powerful.

When billionaires write the laws, and buy the politicians, police, prosecutors, judges, and executive, this is not the case.

One big difference between the US and China and why the US will never be able to pull off the same success even with the same power is that much of the CCP is led by people with engineering backgrounds, while much of the US is led by people with law backgrounds.