Allen L. Roland's Radio Weblog: Obama's Greatest Obstacle is Voter Apathy and the Culture of War--Salon.com

Sometimes you just have to include a quote from the article, especially when it is so right on the money...

"Gary Kamiya, Salon, comments on the re-emergence of the divisive Republican tactic of the culture war ~ " Bush was the great divider, masterfully playing on Americans' fear, resentment and patriotism. First Al Gore, then John Kerry were painted as out-of-touch elitists, mandarins and eggheads. It worked: Bush rode the red-state side of the culture wars to victory twice (with a little help from the Supreme Court the first time around).

It's terrifying that so many Americans are so driven by resentment that they will vote against more qualified candidates simply because they seem "different" from them. For what this means is that anyone with expertise, unusual intelligence, mastery, special knowledge, is likely to be rejected by voters who are resentful of "elites... "

It's almost incomprehensible that any American could take a McBush / Palin ticket seriously but the fact that polls show
the possibility of a close election ~ suggests that the following observations made by H.L Mencken contain some real truth.

Mencken understood and predicted the dumbing down of America, as witness by the election of George W Bush, long ago when he wrote " When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental ~ men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand."

Mencken goes on to correctly say " So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre ~ the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.' The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

So...this has already happened, and yet here we are poised to do it again...

Dear Lord, if you can find it in your heart, please let this year be different. Thank you, your most humble servant, prin.