Democracy under duress? Tense countdown to Election Day in the United States

The planet's predominant superpower prides itself on its rules-based order and a constitution that codifies and sets in stone the transfer of power through the ballot box, a model and values the United States tries to impose on the world scene. But for all the laws, all the rules, there is Mao's line about political legitimacy, that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."