I do not think so. I vented a long list of complaints of the US society and political system on this list, but attraction to feudalism is not one of them. The phenomenon you are referring to has been called by Alexis deTocqueville the "tyranny of the majority." The argument boils down to that excessive individualism and commitment to superficial egalitarianism prevents most people from caring about public affairs and public institutions, ceding this territory to demagogues and tyrants. This, according to deTocqueville, was one of the biggest paradoxes of democracy. Other paradoxes were, inter alia, that the absence of the aristocracy - which to be sure deTocqueville considered parasitic - had the effect of vulgarizing culture and also the quality of public officers.
>
> But I can appreciate that well-meaning advice by foreigners about how
> to restructure you political system is probably futile. Americans are
> probably just as pig-headed as Iraqis when it comes to meddling
> foreigners. (It goes with the insular locally-based mindset.) But we
> have a duty to try to educate you all the same. What used to be
> called the white man's burden, don't you know? ;-)
Again, the phenomenon to which you are referring can be more properly characterized as anti-intellectualism, which Richard Hofstadter attributes - following deTocqueville's line of argument (but he does not acknowledge that) - to superficial egalitarianism, individualism, the cult of business, and the influence of evangelical religiosity.
An important corollary to Hofstadter's argument - formulated in the early 1960s - is how much the country has changed since that time. Anti-intellectual appeals and gutter populism used to be a sure way to win elections until the 1960s. For example, in 1828 the anti-intellectualist populist Jackson received 55.97% of the popular vote while the "intellectual" Adams receiving only 43.63%. That division was replicated without much change in 1952 when anti-intellectualist populist Eisenhower ("egghead" was his catch phrase) got 55.18% of the popular vote while the intellectual Stevenson got 44.3%. Now fast forward to 2000. The gutter populist Bush got 47.87% of the popular vote and LOST to the intellectual Gore who gained 48.38%.
Times are changing in the US and the tidal wave is turning against the Boobus Americanus - to borrow the nifty catch phrases coined by HL Mencken - a fellow Baltimorean whose writings I greatly enjoy. The Boobuses know that and mobilize to fight it, as evidenced by the ferocity of the Bush campaign - but the numbers are slowly turning against them. They may or may not pull it in 2004 but they are becoming a minority - very vocal, very angry, and very vicious - but a minority nonetheless.
Wojtek