Daniel Greenfield writes in his blog Sultan Knish, The Art of Building Things, 6/10/13.

Excerpt:

In the face of chaos, Muslims chose not liberal institutionalism but Islamic institutionalism.  What this means in practice, beyond women with covered faces and more bombs going off on buses, is that the state and its economic monopolies will be in the hands of the devout who will nobly take care of the needs of the people. The practical difference between Islamism and Socialism is that the former is more backward, more tyrannical and more violently disposed toward us. But these are distinctions in degree, not in essence. Both Islamists and Socialists institute tyrannies based on theorists from the last few centuries that recreate a more ancient feudalism in the name of an absolute call for justice.

Americans with Obama, like the Egyptians with Morsi, chose a collective leader who would inspire and take care of them. A leader who would make them feel united into one single group. The promise of transcendence lingered over Tahrir Square and the United States Capitol, a promise that individual differences and divisions would melt away leaving only a perfect collective that would be capable of doing anything it set its mind to.

Even if Obama had been genuinely well-intentioned, the project of collective creativity was doomed from the start. Institutions excel most at their own construction. In their early stages they can fund creative works, but with the passage of time they become incapable of meaningfully interacting with the outside world.

The longer an institution exists the more likely it is to develop its own groupthink, its collective mentality and culture that allows for internal consistency, but makes creative work impossible. Like the Soviet Union, these collectives can draw up grandiose plans that are inefficient, have no purpose and are implemented without regard to actual conditions on the ground.

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