I believe, on intuition alone, that these understandings are widely shared if dimly grasped by the American people and they resist mightily the further erosion of the Presidency which is the principal symbolic and administrative institution of our political life. Moreover, they may sense what we have forgotten. It was a central belief of the Founding Fathers, based on the experience of history, that republican institutions are fragile, the moments of their existence fleeting in historical time and we had to guard against lurching back into a life of domination. We now seem to take these institutions for granted as if they are indestructible. Journalists seem to believe that democratic politics, which alone underwrites their craft, is a self perpetuating machine that will run of itself, that can withstand any amount of undermining.
Nothing is further from the truth.
I am not suggesting that we are in an Imaginative proximity to revolution. Americans love change but hate revolution, the exact opposite of the French. But revolution is not the only option. People can also retreat deeper into private life, inside gated communities, seeking private solutions to public problems, consigning politics to the realm of game and spectacle for mass distraction, a place inhabited by cretins governed by the lowest of motives. The weakest and most vulnerable among us which is why so many cling to the Presidency in the midst of a general revulsion.