The fact that you seem to think our process is not working exactly as it should (albeit to a HORRID extreme right now) and that you seem to believe that our freedoms are being taken away anywhere near the level of, well, take your pick of authoritarian states suggests your scope of what the world is like is being seen through a very narrow lens. We (the American population) have been under informational assault from both the inside and outside for far longer than a few months, heavily via external influence campaigns (due to the impossibly complex interweaving and interconnections of the modern Internet) and internal power-hungry individuals who aim to do better only for themselves and not their fellow American. Around half of the country has forgotten we're all family, and fight against/amongst themselves, and the other half is just plain tired of the stupid.
The vast differences in socioeconomic class, living conditions based on where you make your home, disparity between education, and a million other things cause us to see each other as enemies instead of countrymen. And as of late, late being the last 5-8 years minimum, large patches of leadership (on both sides) have utterly shit the bed on breaking down barriers and reminding us that we're all the same.
The "most powerful man in the world" hasn't been silenced, he's been put on a timeout from using a single social media platform for a short amount of time. This is the same as if he was banned from posting on 4chan for a day. Until legislation passes that A) Internet access is a universal, constitutional right, and then B) the Internet becomes owned by the public, and not by private companies providing a service that you pay for with vague ToS and your lack of concern for your own data privacy, this won't be changing anytime soon.