Several times in the past five years, I have written on the cult of personality. After reading Paul C. Vitz, Faith of the Fatherless, it is clear to me that the substitution of tyrants could very well be because people have an inflated view of leaders as fathers. I make this extrapolation looking at the growing cult of personality, which revealed itself to me in 2007 in the States.
During the media crisis of the first few months of the current papacy, this was true. People wanted a perfect man to be pope. Well, he is not perfect. Neither am I. But, those most distressed are those who fall into the cult of personality.
Also, the huge over-idolization of movies stars, political leaders and even CEOs, has led more and more to the worship of persons, rather than the worship of God.
For a man to come into the world, claim to be the savior of all economic and political problems, and then be given the power to do so, a man usually called the Anti-Christ, would be easier and easier coup to "pull-off" in this climate of hero-worship.
The lack of fathers provides an entire club of people who are looking for someone to take care of them, to guide them, to mold them.
The popularity of super-hero movies may be part of this sensibility to the cult of personality.
See how easy it would be for one superman, one extremely talented leader to take over, using the emotional needs of an entire world of fatherless creatures.
Vitz noted that most atheists are highly intelligent, are ambitious, are arrogant and vain. This sounds like many of our so-called leaders today.
Envy and personal resentment cause arrogance, and even atheism. I see this close at hand. That many Americans now hate the good, the true and the beautiful, as Vitz notes atheist so, is a sad declaration of the attitudes of arrogance and hatred coming out of the world of the atheists.
Hatred leads to envy and envy leads to the politics of envy, which we now see in America. How easy it would be for one tyrant to stir up this envy to a frenzied state, and take control after the chaos of civil war.
We need to pray, reflect, study, act....or we shall be swept away in that chaos.