Other than being disrespectful to five-year-olds…

…well said. I live in a country famous among its many foreign workers for citizens with child-like, petty views, known to its hereditary government’s supporters and detractors alike as a paternalistic society. Kant had words for places like this; we live. not in an enlightened society, but in what recently has been and could again be an age of enlightenment. The thought of what once was the United States devolving into such a state, with even a remnant of its current military, economic, socio-cultural, and geopolitical power should scare any thinking person, let alone any thinking American.

Because, as was touched on by this post, one of the early necessary goals of fascism, even in the limited sense of Mussolini’s “fusion of State and corporate power”, is to create a large base of people without any intellectual curiosity or civic-mindedness, but who, on paper, are extremely “well-educated”. A national mantra of “only family and clan matter, or can be trusted” reinforces that goal quite capably.

If America truly does fall off that precipice, it is difficult to see how she will not take the rest of humanity with her — a truly extinction-level event.