Samuel Eliot Morison famously said that English North America was colonized by people who believed in the Reformation but not the Renaissance. If the Admiral and historian cared less for alliteration, he might have said that early Americans rejected the Enlightenment.
Just to be clear: Americans have in their DNA a rejection of rational and scientific ways of knowing. We embrace fantasies that we prefer with less than the usual caution and skepticism.
This is the condition that will be the end of the American Empire. But it is not actually uniquely American. It was, after all, nearly universal before the 15th century. If you were well educated, somewhere along the way a professor or two had you read Francis Bacon -- a man who took a giant step forward into the rational world. If very well educated, that professor had you read between the lines in Descartes, discerning Rene's truth from his clever but false hand-waving for the Church, a powerful institution that could not be directly confronted.
Epistemological defect, what I now believe is better described in many as epistemological psychosis, is a widespread disease. It is only partially about insufficient mental capacity. It is in part about the transmission of contagious memes that reflect myths many find impossible to resist.
Surely it is the contagious element, more than the defects in mental capacity, that make some nations in some times more prone to epistemological psychosis than others.
For many -- possibly the majority -- plagued by this brand of irrationality, ideas don't really matter. (Snyder delivers a substantial and subtle proof of the latter in The Road to Unfreedom, but I wish to go elsewhere.). This makes the current paradox possible: Putin's obsession with a unique branch of kleptocratic, Christian Fascism -- one imbued with a powerful view of Russian exceptionalism that must be advanced by the destruction of everything in its way -- is being served by a different American form of kleptocratic, Christo-Fascism that believes in American exceptionalism.
But in this chess game, we are being horribly outplayed. Putin is destroying us. Not only is Trump not remotely up to the match, he's not on our side.
For the rational processing events as they unfold, it is clear that Putin's long stated goals of destabilizing the EU, NATO, the US, and the global economy while re-establishing control over former Iron Curtain and Soviet peoples, are being achieved at an astonishingly high rate.
No one wins one chess game after another like this on merit alone. US Intelligence, diplomatic and military functioning are being short-circuited by alternative, probably treasonous, channels, turning over to Putin this extraordinary series of victories.
Trump's allegiance is to his wealth and power. No use bemoaning now the disloyalty of a five-time draft dodger. What has kept the Trojan doors open to the giant, stuffed bear is a strangely corrupted GOP who abandoned their sworn duty to Constitution, Law, and Country.
And what has made GOP treason possible is the extraordinary and probably lethal level of epistemological psychosis in the American voting population.
We can stare at a Russian Bear and see an Eagle. It's hard to defend yourself when nearly half your countrymen are throwing confetti at the invaders.
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