Not in the way Sinclair Lewis imagined, with Mussolini and Hitler as his paradigms, but in the way established in the 21st century by soft authoritarians, like Orban in Hungary and the Orwellian "Law and Justice" party in Poland:  weaponize the central government and the executive branch to intimidate, coerce, and silence the institutions of civil society, while corrupting the courts and civil service into a political arm of the executive.

The U.S. is no longer a democracy with the rule of law, although parts of the U.S. have both.  It is a soft authoritarian society:  it's sixty-year experiment with national democracy that began with the defeat of the de jure apartheid regimes in many states, appears to be ending.  I have no confidence that political murders of opponents and dissidents by the federal police forces (including the soon-to-be massively expanded "immigration police") won't be coming down the line (political murders were, let us recall, a regular feature of the apartheid regimes in the U.S. between the 1870s and 1960s).  We may yet end up as a "hard authoritarian" society, although I think that is less likely given federalism and the size of the country.

How has this happened?  One of the two viable political parties is now a cult of personality, thanks to the ability of its leader to influence some forty million voters reliably, enough to make every Republican incumbent who isn't already batshit crazy and fascist fear a primary challenge.  As a result, the Republican-controlled Congress poses no obstacles to the whims of the lawless gangster in the White House.  He has been aided and abetted, of course, by the Republican super-legislature known as the Supreme Court.

What could turn this around?  I'm not sure anything can, but here are some possibilities:  (1) Trump's recklessness and narcissism produces an economic disaster (e.g., massive inflation), which will turn the electorate and the ruling class against him; (2) the Democrats seize the House and Senate in 2026, and declare political war; even if they take only the House (more likely), they can still make things much harder for the Trumpistas; (3) Trump himself expires.  The last scenario may be the most likely, given his age and health and the actuarial odds.  If #3 happens, then J.D. Vance becomes President and civil war breaks out in the Republican Party:  Vance has no constituency (he was only elected to the Senate because of Trump), he commands the allegiance of no voters, and so no one in the Republican Party is afraid of him. 

Of course, to undo the extraordinary damage of just the first six months of the monster child, it will be necessary to have total Democratic control of the executive and legislative branches, and to enact massive reforms that undue the damage and erect fire walls against it happening again.

I am not counting on any of this happening, but those are the only possible scenarios that might break the fever grip of incipient American fascism.  But this is no longer a democratic nation, but a soft authoritarian one, and no one should pretend otherwise.