A genial, round-faced man in his fifties, with guieless blue eyes, an almost childish twitch to his lips, a fringe of brown hair playing around his slightly prominent ears.
[snip]
"Yancy likes people to take a spiritual view of matters. He's strong on God and honesty in government and being hard-working and clean-cut. Warmed-over truisms."
[snip]
"I'm mighty grateful for my family," Yancy revealed. "In these times of stress, it's my family that I turn to, as my pillar of strength . . . Sitting here, in my study, this wonderful Sunday morning," Yancy rumbled on, "I realize how lucky we are to be alive, and to have this lovely planet, and the fine cities and houses, all the things God has given us to enjoy. But we've got to be careful. We've got to make sure we don't lose these things."
A change had come over Yancy. It seemed to Tavener that the image was subtly altering. It wasn't the same man; the good humor was gone. This was an older man, and larger. A firm-eyed father, speaking to his children.
"My friends," Yancy intoned, "there are forces that could weaken this planet. Everything we've built up for our loved ones, for our children, could be taken away from us overnight. We must learn to be vigilant. We must protect our liberties, our possessions, our way of life. If we become divided, and fall to bickering among each other, we will be easy prey for our enemies. We must work together, my friends.
"That's what I've been thinking about this Sunday morning. Cooperation. Teamwork. We've got to be secure, and to be secure, we must be one united people. That's the key, my friends, the key to a more abundant life."
And what conclusions do the protagonist, Taverner, and his associates draw about Yancy and the society he leads?
Taverner snapped the tape off and returned it to the slot. Yancy had definite opinions on everything . . . or were they so definite?
A strange suspicion was growing in him. On some topics, yes. On minor issues, Yancy had exact rules, specific maxims drawn from mankind's rich storehouse of folklore. But major philosophical and political issues were something else again.
Getting out one of the many tapes listed under War, Taverner ran it through at random.
". . . I'm against war," Yancy pronounced angrily. "And I ought to know; I've done my share of fighting."
There followed a montage of battle scenes: the Jupiter-Mars War in which Yancy had distinguished himself by his bravery, his concern for his comrades, his hatred of the enemy, his variety of proper emotions.
"But," Yancy continued staunchly, "I feel a planet must be strong. We must not surrender ourselves meekly . . . weakness invites attack and fosters aggression. By being weak we promote war. We must gird ourselves and protect those we love. With all my heart and soul I'm against useless wars; but I say again, as I've said many times before, a man must come forward and fight a just war. He must not shrink from his responsibility. War is a terrible thing. But sometimes we must . . ."
As he restored the tape, Taverner wondered just what the hell Yancy had said. What were his views on war? They took up a hundred separate reels of tape; Yancy was always ready to hold forth on such vital and grandiose subjects as War, the Planet, God, Taxation. But did he say anything?
A cold chill crawled up Taverner's spine. On specific -- and trivial -- items there were absolute opinions: dogs are better than cats, grapefruit is too sour without a dash of sugar, it's good to get up early in the morning, too much drinking is bad. But on big topics . . . an empty vacuum, filled with the vacant roll of high-sounding phrases. A public that agreed with Yancy on war and taxes and God and planet agreed with absolutely nothing. And with everything.
On topics of importance, they had no opinion at all. They only thought they had an opinion.
Rapidly, Taverner scanned tapes on various major subjects. It was the same all down the line. With one sentence Yancy gave; with the next he took away. The total effect was a neat cancellation, a skillful negation. But the viewer was left with the illusion of having consumed a rich and varied intellectual feast. It was amazing. And it was professional: the ends were tied up too slickly to be mere accident.
Nobody was as harmless and vapid as John Edward Yancy. He was just too damn good to be true.
[snip]
"I see," [Taverner] said softly. "They'd actually start a war. It would be worth a war, to them."
"You're damn right it would. And to start a war, they have to get the public lined up. Actually, the people here have nothing to gain. A war would wipe out all the small operators -- it would concentrate power in fewer hands -- and they're few enough already. To get the eighty million people here behind the war, they need an indifferent, sheep-like public. And they're getting that. When this Yancy campaign is finished, the people here on Callisto will accept anything. Yancy does all their thinking for them . . . The important thing is the unvarying monotony of it. A whole generation is growing up looking to Yancy for an answer to everything."
"It's big business, then," Taverner observed. "This project of creating and maintaining Yancy."
"Thousands of people are involved in just writing the material."
[snip]
"In nine years I've come to see the essential key to the Yancy character . . . the key to the new type of person we're growing, here. It's simple. It's the element that makes that person malleable enough to be led around."
"I'll bite," Taverner said patiently, hoping the line to Washington was good and clear.
"All Yancy's beliefs are insipid. The key is thinness. Every part of his ideology is diluted: nothing excessive. We've come as close as possible to no beliefs . . . you've noticed that. Wherever possible we've cancelled attitudes out, left the person apolitical. Without a viewpoint."
"Sure," Taverner agreed. "But with the illusion of a viewpoint."
"All aspects of personality have to be controlled; we want the total person. So a specific attitude has to exist for each concrete queston. In every respect, our rule is: Yancy believes the least troublesome possibility. The most shallow. The most simple, effortless view, the view that fails to go deep enough to stir any real thought."
Taverner got the drift. "Good solid lulling views."
Just replace "Yancy" with "Bush," "Callisto" with "America," and the war described in the story with the Global War on Terror, and it speaks clearly and straightforwardly to our time.
PKD wrote the story in 1955 with President Eisenhower in mind. By 1980 the powers that be improved the Yancy model with Reagan. And now we have the perfection of the Yancy model, Yancy 3.0 . . . George W. Bush.
And with that we see the end of our grand experiment in self-governance.
5:55:43 PM 
When I recently reread Philip Dick's 1955 short story "The Mold of Yancy," I was amazed at how much Yancy, the avuncular Big Brother figure of the story, reminded me of George W. Bush and the political climate in which we live. It truly is uncanny. Consider the excerpts below.