Why have the Majority Of Americans become so very much in favor of Feudalism?

[deutsey]

30. Excellent post

To it, I would only add my suggestion that you include Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" alongside "The Great Gatsby."

If you've never read it, don't be fooled by the sanitized versions of it like the movie with Bing Crosby in it. Twain's book is a savage critique of the American ruling classes and their aristocratic aspirations, as well as capitalism, religion, and the ignorance and passivity of common people. The narrator, Hank Morgan, is the very essence of the split personality you're talking about: he's a small "d" democrat who favors the French Revolution while at the same time uses his Yankee ingenuity and ambition to rig Arthurian England so that it becomes run like an authoritarian corporation with himself as its CEO (he becomes known as "The Boss," the real power behind the king).

It doesn't end well at all, neither for Hank nor for the society he tries to create: a bloody civil war that ends with mass slaughter, the general implosion of society, and Hank completely losing everything, including his mind.