Excellent article. Followed + resteemed.
I will say I think the reason it is having more success in the west is due to the intentional dumbing down of the education system.
Not only do they know very little about history, they are content that the very little they happen to know is enough.
Throw with that an increasing tendency to treat things as FACTS and TRUTH simply because they emotionally feel or sound good. A large portion of the population has no clue on how to actually reason, dissect ideas, question themselves, etc. Many of them can also never be wrong. When something goes wrong they will always seek out a scapegoat rather than admitting the things they themselves may be responsible for.
We also have a lot of people as ADULTS who are very active that mostly lived a sheltered fascade of reality as a child. We are seeing the impacts of what happens when people sheltered from reality turn into adults. They were raised to avoid and not have to deal with conflict in their safe spaces. Sadly it is those encounters that teach us how to ask questions, accept responsibility, and even question our own beliefs.
We are reaping what we have sown.
I totally agree. I tried to focus on what I felt the driving core behind this problem was so as to not make it way longer than it already is. There are lots of feedback loops in society reinforcing these ideals. One key you touched on is the poor state of the educational system. The conflagration of facts with feelings I think is more of a result of the normalization of this narcissistic behavior. Unfortunately this behavior just keeps snowballing as more people act this way and enable this behavior, and others imitate it because everyone wants to fit in right? Thanks very much for reading, following, resteeming, and the thoughtful comment!