Most Americans aren't idiots, but I've come to the conclusion that a strong plurality of the talking heads and people who congregate on Daily Kos are.

They don't seem to understand that there are huge chunks of the US that are undergoing almost unspeakable economic hardship at this point.  

Nothing irritates me more than being back at the University, and having friends who've never been anything but a student delude themselves into thinking that because they have a college degree they will be able to go out and find a job making
$100,000 a year.  

Imagine a whole country of people who are convinced that someday they will all be rich.  Americans are on the whole not class consciousness, but in the lat few years that's changed dramatically as places that used to have well paying union jobs have seen them go away.  And now everybody's trying to live on $7.00 hour, working 52 weeks a year with no health insurance.

Americans on the whole may be for the most part Christians, but our elites are far more into Mammon than Jesus.

And until people realize that they will never be wealth, but that they can live comfortably if they unite to defend their rights, there will be no change.

America needs to introduce the cultural concept  that the Swedes call logom and that my Amish ancestors call being plain to the national dialoge.  

At some point you have enough money to live comfortably, and the further acquisition of wealth is driven by the desire for increased social standing than any actual need.  

Europeans know this, but it's anathema in the United States.  And it's killing this country.  Max Weber must be turning in his grave.  Formal rationality has overcome substantive rationality, and society cannabilized so that some may gain.  But formal rationality and the money logic can't exist without society.  

What use is money and property if society descends into a war of all upon all?

What does a fancy car mean when you have to live in a gated community, and carry a concealed handgun to keep it?

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

Altemeyer acknowledges that there are indeed left wing authoritarians, but his samples of North American population don't have enough of those to make a representative study. LWA would be the "follow the revolutionary leader type".

Which goes a long way, imho, to explain why the left in North America has sucked so bad for the past four decades.

The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill