Colbertization of politics.

Let's talk about Uncle Sam a little longer. Stephen Colbert  appeared before US Congressional committee on immigration in his blow-hard O' Reillesque persona (via Hot Air again). In a way this just furthers bolsters the argument that American politics is becoming an extension of personal, in this particular instance a result of excessive self-regard and at the same an acute need for peer approval among the demographic group termed as hipsters. This main characteristic of this phenomenon, let's call it colbertization, is trivialization of serious matters, accompanied with self-assuredness and self-righteousness that only comfort and security of living in United States can bring. In it it is reminiscent of what Heinlein termed as "Bread and Circus democracy",

"A perfect democracy, a 'warm body' democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally has no internal feedback for self correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens...which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it...which for the majority translates as 'Bread and Circuses'

"Bread and Circuses is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader--the barbarians enter Rome."