Any casual observer whose views had not been warped by a half-century of media puffery might look upon the two Democratic front-runners with a combination of astonishment and fright. Naturally, the first question that leaps from one’s mind is, how did a wispy-haired fossil straight from Marx Brothers’ central casting, spouting socialist shibboleths at a grammar school level ever make it so far in American politics? This obviously leads to the next question about his competition, a cackling political shrew who smiles with “one hundred percent certainty” that her running as the country’s first unindicted felon will not be interrupted by something as inconvenient as an FBI investigation. Who set this all up, for crying out loud? The public relations adjunct to that famous law firm, Dewey, Cheatum & Howe? With due apologies to Larry, Moe, and Curly — very intelligent and talented men, by the way — the question remains, how did this all come about?

Of course, the first answer finds its roots in progressive policy goals and requires pulling the curtain aside from all the presidential “Deals” that fed on Teddy Roosevelt’s Square Deal a century ago, plus delving into the works of a host of pundits, professors and fellow travelers on the political left. We should also not forget glancing at such luminaries as Henry Wallace, dubbed by one writer as “the closest the Soviet Union ever came to actually choosing a president of the United States,” as well as Mr. Hope and Change himself, who arguably came much closer than Wallace on this score, though with different overseas supporters. In other words, Sanders and Hillary Clinton may be regarded as progeny from a long line of progressives-socialists who have labored to transform America into a European-style welfare state, contorting the Constitution in the process, along with everything else that made America free, prosperous and exceptional among the nations of the world.

A second explanation flows from two generations of indoctrination in cultural Marxism throughout the country’s schools, with its emphasis on class, race and gender accompanying a visceral loathing of America. Indeed, as recently pointed out by Jonathan Haidt, Professor of Ethical Leadership at NYU’s Stern School of Business, “most people are horrified by what’s going on in the universities.” As well they should be, particularly when one throws in progressive dogmas that enthrall the vast majority of the country’s political reporters. One result of this situation is that too many Americans are mostly ignorant about America’s attributes or socialism’s abominable DNA and are therefore receptive to Sanders’s sugarcoated bromides. As far as Hillary is concerned, likely most of her supporters are only superficially aware of the controversy surrounding her emails but dismiss it as not important — they’re only emails, right? Or, some may fully grasp these messages’ portentous, nearly treasonous implications but simply don’t care, which is much worse.

The danger of all this is each presidential election increasingly has become a referendum not just on a handful of mundane policy choices, but rather on the future existence of the United States remaining as an exceptional nation; indeed, as the last best hope of earth. Unfortunately, plunging into political melodrama here is fully justified, because anyone with the slightest awareness of national trends realizes that the country simply cannot continue on its current trajectory — financially, socially, morally and constitutionally — before some kind of catastrophe takes place. We just don’t know when, that’s all. In the meantime, fatuous campaign rhetoric about free college, CEO pay, climate change and voting for a woman simply doesn’t cut it; too many foundationally important issues need to be confronted right now.

Of course, lurking beneath every discussion about these matters is the question about the size and role of American national government. And to the country’s tragic misfortune, America is developing in a fashion described with uncanny prescience by Alexis de Tocqueville nearly two centuries ago. Indeed, many of those concerned about America’s future have these words from Tocqueville’s Democracy in America memorized; read again what the sage had to say about American citizens and their government: “Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate… It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood.”

Which is the signature of progressive totalitarianism, a polity filled with perpetual children dominated by “an immense and tutelary power,” whose goal is to keep them in that condition forever, while perfecting its tools of total domination. This is the bad news. The worse news for opponents of Sanders and Hillary is that, with one exception, viable Republican contenders are not much better.