“It’s unlikely he can succeed at transforming the US into a dictatorship. For that you need the zealots and fanatics, who will destroy democracy in the same spirit that a religious revival destroys the Devil. He lost that loving feeling, win, lose or draw.”
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Well, there are zealots and fanatics out there...in the media, unions and elsewhere. I hear people say that Obama hasn’t been able to accomplish what he has set out to do because of Congress, and it will be necessary to dismantle Congress in order to achieve those ends. What do you think that kind of talk means?
It means that they dearly do want to have a dictatorship. But what’s missing is the religious fervor to carry it off. At this point, the fanatics are starving for religious fervor. Obama is unable to provide it, because he’s lost his anointed status. He’s not “The One (who will bring about Heaven on Earth,” just “the (one in a position to further our agenda).” Further their agenda he will, but the bloom is off the rose. Alexis de Tocqueville noted this, that those that seek centralized administration of every aspect of the lives of others must do it as a religious or semi-religious movement. Writing in 1834 (?) he held up as an example of what happens when that movement-like fervor fades, the Ottoman Empire, which originally was a theocratic despotism, then started reforming and secularizing itself, and as a result was left as a mere despotism and therefore was in rapid decline. Eric Hoffer also says that true believers need to have a powerful belief in the future in order to sacrifice the present to it. O had that sort of revivalist fervor behind him in 2008, but he’s lost it. Without it, he can’t destroy 230+ years of democracy. He might want to, but he can’t, unless he can revive that fervor. He still a sucky, left-wing megalomaniac. But the religion he wants to sell to the true believers is himself, and right now he’s not salable as a religion, merely a politician. That could change, of course. But right now, he’s a good deal below critical mass, even if he wins.