And you're right, not much has changed in political affairs since 1964, or as Hofstadter argued so cogently, since long before that.

He also suggests that this constellation of delusions may also be a natural defect in the wiring of the human psychosocial mind. No doubt there is some truth to that. But I also suspect other potential causes, at least as they relate to contemporary America. Many of the themes he describes as being part and parcel of American, indeed human, political thought, such as the endless search for villains and conspiracies, found fertile ground in post war America.

The USA began the last half of the 20th century as the most powerful, influential country in the world. It was also the freest and most prosperous. Social flaws in the world's greatest democracy, such as social inequality, class differences, poverty and racism were being slowly but systematically dismantled, and the country had not only just defeated one great 20th century tyranny, Fascism, it was successfully grappling with another, Communism.

But the party could not go on forever. As our relative advantages over the world slowly eroded after the war, and as our economy gradually succumbed to consumerism, debt, laziness, and waste, cracks started to appear in the social fabric. America has always provided a great deal, but it also has promised more than it could deliver. In a meritocracy, and ours is about the best the world has ever seen, every personal failure can only be interpreted in three ways. Either we are the product of historical forces, the individual whose personal condition and position is threatened is incompetent, or the system is failing due to external attack or domestic treachery. Many people would prefer to believe the latter.

Prosperity increased, but the gap between rich and poor did as well, until by the 70s it became slowly obvious that things just weren't as good as they could be. In another decade, it became clear they even weren't as good as they used to be. The American Dream meant a single family home, a car, kids in college, and a nice job in an office. If not for the individual worker, at least within sight for his children. This was still possible of course, but the price was getting steeper. First, we went into debt. Then we sent the women to work, but the decline continued. We had credit, welfare programs for the middle class (like subsidized college degrees) but things just seemed to be getting tighter.

It wasn't noticeable at first because the post-war generation, the boomers (and I'm one of them!) were doing well. We were enjoying the prosperity and the new social freedoms and the benefits of racial, sexual and political liberation. But we also didn't realize that a main reason for our wealth and well being was the fact that we were starting our careers. The economy may have been getting stiff and slowing down, but we were young, strong, and approaching our peak earning years. We had good jobs, promising careers, excellent educations. We didn't notice the decline because we were hitting our stride. Our parents, remembering the misery of the Depression and the uncertainty of the war, were now settled in and comfortable. The Dream was theirs and their kids were going to surpass them.

Meanwhile, Japan and Europe were rebuilding their industrial plant, mostly by buying the technology from us, while we were dismantling our own industrial base and failing to invest in improving it; relying more and more on service jobs and cheap imports. And of course, we pissed away a good piece of the abundant natural resources of the North American Continent and the impoverished trade colonies we mined around the globe.

Everybody wanted that job in the office. We wanted it all, and the only way we could still get it was debt: personal debt, corporate debt, government debt, balance of payments debt. For a lucky few who were able to take advantage of the benefits of the new age, but still had inherited some discipline and skepticism from Depression-era parents, it was easy to resist the urge to splurge. As early as the sixties, alert social critics were already warning that the party would not go on forever. They were right, but they were dismissed as Cassandras--or subversives. Saving and financial prudence were not good for business.

Suddenly the industrial jobs started drying up, and the white collar careers with them. When things go bad in a meritocracy you don't want to admit it might be at least partly your fault, or that the system you had counted on to go on forever was failing and you had failed to notice. So the temptation was to blame it on the other, the external threat, the foreigners, the minorities, the poor, the scapegoat. By the time the Soviet Union collapsed from its own internal inefficiencies and grotesque mismanagement, we had run out of enemies as well as excuses. History finally caught up with us.

Its easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, and we all can't really be blamed for not seeing it coming. But talk to an older person, particularly one from Europe. They will tell you the same thing.

"You Americans have no sense of history. You have never really known war, or hunger, or even (except for the Depression generation) severe economic distress. You won't be able to handle it."

Too many of us will fail to see that the forces of history are at work here, it is not a conspiracy of evil out to get us. Oh sure, evil does exist, and there are real conspiracies. But we can't blame all our problems on them. We need not be on the road to disaster, but the road is going to be uphill from now on and we should come to terms with the fact that our period of relative prosperity compared to the rest of the world is coming to an end. From now on we're going to have to compete. And for a population convinced of their own exceptionalism and entitlement, it may be easier to find somebody to blame.