The Dark Ages of the early 21st Century

as I was reading for my current research project, I found a passage that fit so well in the early 21st century political climate of the United States.

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... before long, [there]...gave way to a period in which the intellectual openness of the preceding three centuries was tried and found guilty. During this period, social structures and philosophical assumptions were overthrown by climatic changes, famine, and a series of plagues...; political ideals and ethical standards were challenged...Western thought degenerated into pragmatic skepticism or mystic fideism, into flaccid subjectivity or stolid dogmatism...

There was no challenging of faulty logic by good logic, no mustering of sound arguments to overturn the unsound. Just a simple albeit effective anathema sit-one that would lead, to Luther's famous curse upon "the whore, Reason," and, on the other, to authoritarian reforms..."

This passage is from The Key to the Name of the Rose by A.Haft, J.White, and R.White, 1999. pages 25-26.