(First of all let's use my starting point for now: Covid was real.)
I would make two different categories here. Authoritarianism removes 1) police and court redress and 2) regular elections. Then it issues edicts.We however allow both, which are structural defenses in how we are set up, that can be used to slow down an overweening state, which can often get a bit too edict-y. That's been the recipe for ~250 years. Police, Courts and Elections > the central, edict-giving state.
Burden of proof is in your court re: despite a ~250 year decent run, now our system, which is built to thwart authoritarianism, is failing. How? Where? And significant enough to represent an overthrowing of 250 years of decent success?
Or: do you dispute the we have actually evaded authoritarianism for 250 years? Some Lost Cause folks think we've been a tyranny since the 1850's.
Liberal Authoritarianism.
It's not the traditional form of authoritarianism that you're focusing on.
They can completely bypass the need to remove
"1) police and court redress and 2) regular elections" by simply appealing to authority and then using said authority to hammer every dissenter as if they were a wayward nail.
The gov't focuses on crafting narratives and manipulating public opinion first, such that elections no longer offer a true alternative choice, and 'police and court redress' becomes meaningless when the conditions for these actions are then predicated on the Liberal positions said to be moral and ethical.
The entire unscrupulous invasion of Iraq, for example, was largely based on the premise of
"Saddam Bad", including the gross manipulation of the facts of the matter. An invasion built on audacious lies, which then led us down a path where any disobedience or dissent was marginalized without even needing to 'issue any edicts' to then be enacted by the levers given to our gov't to do so.
The end result is largely the same, while being able to dodge the 'traits' of Authoritarianism that you trundled out.
In a domestic sense, just look at Jan6th and the BLM protests and riots that preceded it. As long as you can at least argue the most tenuous connection to some sort of Liberal 'feels-driven' justification, you'll largely be protected under the umbrella of Liberal Democracy. But stray away from that and you'll quickly be maligned as the 'enemy' and the entire weight of our System will fall on your head. Free Speech is only Free so long as you're mindful of the current Groupthink.
So the momentum of our nation, so to speak, is often to simply be 'obedient' to the moral paradigm we're told is right and just and proper. Else we run counter to that, and then the inevitable train of actions will begin, without any need for the traditional centralized authoritarian regime you're arguing to actively force the issue.
And with the goals our Liberal Hegemony has, as long as those in power can convince the people themselves that their goals are moral and just, they can simply lead us along to the conclusions they desire, after which everything else tends to fall into place.
TL;DR: get fucked, you weird goofball
