Total Eclipse of the Mind

When Shakespeare wrote Much Ado About Nothing, he could never have imagined "global warming."

Or Barack Obama.

In fact, if Bill were alive today, he would see that his concept has gone from a play to an age. Much is made of almost everything except things that really matter. They're dismissed, as are any people who are voices of sanity.

More than twenty years ago we were lamenting the dumbing down of our culture. Now that it's fully dumbed, one has to question if recovery's even possible when you see intelligent, educated people who hold beliefs that are both preposterous and dangerous, and who flock to outlandish theories and people.

If we do make it, people will look back centuries from now and wonder how. On the one hand, we're all guinea pigs, and we're finding by trial and error that, as Woody Allen said in Annie Hall, everything our parents told us is good for us is bad - and vice versa. As proof, look no further than one of today's headlines: Low-Salt Diet May Not Be Best for Heart.

Wasn't it written in stone that less salt meant less heart disease? The article says, "the 25 percent of the population who ate the least salt were 80 percent more likely to die of cardiac disease than the 25 percent who ate the most salt." Great, will there now be a salt shortage and enormous price increases?

But what happens when we're wrong about something that can't be reversed - like "Muslim creep?" What if, for example, it turns out that Islam really isn't the "Religion of Peace?" I ask because seeing Obama last night was like watching a bad sci-fi movie... or living in one. You wondered if he's real, and if he is, he's almost certainly a front for a Soros-like manipulator. How else could someone so patently unqualified become the Democrat nominee?

"I respect his many accomplishments even as he's chosen to deny mine," Obama said of McCain last night. Are you asking what I asked? What accomplishments? It can truly be said that even more than Paris Hilton, Obama's merely famous for being famous.

And speaking of bad sci-fi, the TV show, Pushing Daisies, was named "best new show" in an AOL poll. The actual best new show, Chuck, came in fourth. Ironically, Chuck is good sci-fi. Coincidently, Daisies isn't just bad science fiction, it also comes off like bad Shakespeare. But today, bad is good, even if bad is immutable, and I'm not talking about the sort of bad in which tastes change, I'm talking evil. Not only have people lost their sense of outrage, they've lost their sense of what's evil... because they've lost their sense of right and wrong. Thus being homosexual is innate, but conscience ain't.

In another Woody Allen film, Hannah and Her Sisters, Max Von Sydow asks, "Can you imagine the kind of mind that watches wrestling?" Substitute 'Obama" for "wrestling," and the question becomes as current as today's headlines. If you wonder what I mean, just ask yourself how it's possible that an empty Obama could beat Clinton in meat and potatoes Montana?

Even Fox labeled the apparent Obama nomination as "historic." Shocking. Isn't that about race? Wasn't Obama once busily transcending it? I have another word for it anyway - ominous. It has nothing whatsoever to do with race. It has everything to do with the vacuous state of the American mentality. More evidence of that comes from another headline this day - Jay Leno Says "I Do" in Support of Gay Marriage. His argument:

“'He said that he is from Massachusetts and that the sky did not fall in their state when marriage equality became the law of the land there,' a rep for the event said. 'He wants to impress upon everyone here in California that the sky will not fall here either,'” according to E Online.

Leno's right, the sky won't fall in - society will cave in, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life."

Chip, chip, chip, that's how it works. I said to my wife the other day, "If you look back, every previous time in our lives was better than today. Even last year was better than this." If you disagree, you probably also believe  that the "warmalarmists" aren't evil. And I'm not the least bit concerned that someone might disagree with me, the more control they get, the more apparent it will become that Hitler was a pussycat by comparison. 

How about another headline from this morning? "The force is with Obama, 'Star Wars' creator says."
"We have a hero in the making back in the United States today because we have a new candidate for president of the United States, Barack Obama," Lucas said.

A hero? How exactly, George? Wouldn't you love for him to elaborateon that? Because, and I'm not trying to be cynical (it comes naturally), I can't imagine what makes Obama a hero? Is one a hero simply because he won an election? Or does Lucas mean that Obama's a hero because he'll have won against all odds? If the latter, the force isn't just -with- George, it has overwhelmed him. Everyone and his grandmother rallied to Obama's "cause" - and they did it in a frenzy. Just what that cause is, Obama's not yet ready to tell us. He blathered about healthcare and jobs and restoring America in his "soaring" speech, but whatever he didn't get flat-out wrong , the rest was, as they say in legal circles, non-responsive. Shakespeare called it sound and fury signifying nothing.

And yes, I admit that Obama's grandmother didn't exactly rally, but that didn't stop him from using her as needed in several speeches. In the first, he threw her under the bus. Last night, he dragged her out. No word yet on whether she was grateful.

But Obama is just a manifestation of the enormity of the problem. This is real-life invasion of the Body Snatchers, and its scope isn't limited to the left. Conservatives don't see clearly either. How could Bush not be reviled if they did? How could the Republican Party have any members at all?

And if you missed Obama last might, please trust me - you need to be very scared. He's already redefined "dangerous." He'll soon unveil it's new meaning. And in doing so, he'll demonstrate why I say there's no material difference between an evil person and the well-intentioned individual who abets it.

I want to say that there's no way Obama can be elected because I still believe that, but he's aided not just by an adoring, ignorant and insane constituency, he's aided by his opponent and the fact that the right realizes that even the best outcome is undesirable to conservatives and the country, and even warning conservatives that they don't know the meaning of 'undesirable" until there's a President Obama, it may not matter since the entire outcome of this election apears to depend on independents and the disaffected left. Are more of them disaffected by Bush or by Obama? All I can say is, let's hope there are still some sane people left of center even if I haven't found one in two decades of looking.