Yes, you can knock the heart out of any great social movement by killing its most inspirational leaders. That's because most people are, by nature, not leaders, and a few effective leaders are desperately needed to keep any social movement on course.

The USA has not really been a free nation, in my opinion, since November 1963. It's been a nation under a shadowy dictatorship that only goes through the outward motions of what is termed "democracy". The outward motions are necessary in order to maintain a state of normality and unawareness on the part of most people as to what has happened. A compliant, subservient, corporate-controlled media is necessary. A lot of vapid entertainment and mindless consumerism and sensational but meaningless "news" reporting is necessary. Manufactured enemies (foreign or domestic) are necessary. Otherwise people might realize what's been done to them in their own home, what's been taken away, and then there'd be another American revolution. It would be a revolution against the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the multinational corporations that fund them both, the Federal and State governments, the courts and prisons, the police, the FBI, the CIA, the major news media, and the military.

Such a revolution is extremely unlikely...unless the whole American society were first utterly devastated by a complete financial collapse or the catastrophic loss of a very large war (a world war).

Only those eventualities would shock the American people out of their stupor and wake them up to confront "the man behind the curtain".

I do not expect to live to see it happen...nor would I want to be there if it did, because it would be an absolutely terrible time to live in. And like the Russian or Chinese revolutions, there would be no guarantee as to what would follow in its wake.