Radical Establishmentism: a State of Democracy {Revised} I see where you’re coming from by attributing the over-emphasis of individual liberties and personal freedoms (in their contemporary forms) to Christianity. I also think that the Christian ethic helped allow for the one I described (to an extent), even though Christianity and hedonistic violence seem opposed.
As you mention, the tolerance of complete degeneracy and all encompassing sense of equality that result from excess liberalism - i.e. identity-politics - can also be said to have eroded the institutions, corrupted the establishment, democracy/republic.
This doesn’t exactly explain how an untouchable elite is capable of profiting off of the destruction of the democracy, although it points to an inverted link between power and degradation as you mention.
I understand what you mean. You seem to be coming from a Nietzschean perspective, colored somewhat by conservatism as a result of contact with the current age. However, Christianity, in my opinion, is only enough to describe the tendencies of the masses. The core ethic, which informs the masses but which is not formed by them, I think, is more obscure and derived from an older form of spirituality - one which would have been in a form of sinister aversion to the civilization of ancient Greece, especially to the democratic and intellectual freedoms of Athens. It is at once powerful and totalistic while remaining passive, relegated to the realm of spirituality and emotions. That’s why I mentioned Mesopotamia, pop-culture and music, because of how these notions are expressed with emotional backing or through libidinal processes.