Rubes R Us?

Mystified historians will undoubtedly recall 2010 as the year Dumb & Dumber triumphed. A time when crowds paid homage to the astonishing number of "Simple Jacks" running for political office. (Let's also hope, nay pray, that they record America ultimately re-embraced sanity and the basic virtues of Socratic logic before driving the red convertible off the cliff a la Thelma & Louise.)

In tough economic times amid the shifting of our cultural tectonic plates, many conservative voters feel under siege. They are understandably anxious. They thirst for direction and answers. Some are so thirsty that they'll skip the Evian of rational ideas to swig down the fast, miraculous cure-all promised by Simple Jack's Potion -- i.e., the bottled pabulum served by the likes of Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell and Glenn Beck, who think a return to a Disneyland version of the 1950s is the solution to what ails us. To them, it seems, reason is anathema. "Cast off the demonic liberal rationalists and repent!" they say in effect, thundering like Charlton Heston's Moses. "And thou shall be saved!" Bottoms up.

Adding insult to injury, purveyors of the mindless culture wars like Fox News and Charles Murray further poison the waters in our democratic oases by pitting so-called elites against so-called rubes. (See post below)

Yet, voters do bear at least some responsibility for our current indulgence in idiocy. Too many are gulping down what appears to be political elixir, but is in fact dry sand. It is a mirage -- answers unmoored from reality. Sadly, what Michael Douglas said in The American President rings true: “People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.”

We'll learn. But our democratic desert is as vast as the Sahara. That means a lot of time on foot between watering holes. And the canteen holding Simple Jack's Potion has a hole in it.