What went wrong with America, whereby we could end up with such an anti-American president -- by which I mean someone who clearly doesn't accept the principles upon which the nation was founded, but who uses the legitimate institutions of power for illegitimate ends?
A president as far left as Obama would have been impossible fifty years ago (by today's standards JFK would be called conservative), so we have to ask ourselves what has changed in that period of time in order to make an Obama possible -- or worse, inevitable.Dennis Prager has cited television and college (i.e., unprecedented numbers being indoctrinated in leftist seminaries) as the main factors, and it is interesting that Voegelin noticed the same trend -- only 60 years ago. For example, nailing Obama's type in 1954, Voegelin describes the students"who are too dopey ever to find out, by their own powers, that something is wrong. Once they have gone through the process of college and graduate school, they are sufficiently brainwashed and morally debased to hold their positions with sincerity, and for the rest of their lives will never have a critical doubt."In short, Obama is our first president who wasn't only immersed in the nutty ideologies of the left, but who actually believed and assimilated them -- hack, loon, & sphincter. Somewhere in his development an irony curtain descended on his mind, and the resultant absence of critical distance becomes the gateway to authoritarianism. For the leftist, the closure to reality always provokes the totalitarian temptation. In other words, they know the truth. It's just a matter of forcing others to accept it.Of the mass media that made -- and makes -- Obama possible, Voegelin wrote in 1956 of "communication as intoxicant": "The spread of media mass communication... can be used as an essential indicator of the destruction of the personality. For only people whose personality is already deeply corroded will use these media as regular intoxicants....
H/T Vanderleun
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