The Politics Of Dancing

Hussein/McCain And Other Invasive Species

About the interminable electioneering we’ve been subjected to for over a year, maybe two, I have less and less to say by the day. The duo dueling for the presidency doesn’t represent me, speak for me, interest me, or intend to uphold my rights. The latter Obama proves daily—most recently by voting to sunder what remains of the Fourth Amendment after Bush.

For his part, McCain didn’t even bother to show up for the vote that leaves the president with the usurped power to spy on Americans. The passing of the updated FISA, seconded by Obama and skipped by McCain, will grant retrospective immunity to telecommunications companies that have both contravened the Constitution and breached their contracts with clients.

There is a disconnect, if you get my drift. The Hussein/McCain couple says tomato, I say tomahto. “Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto!” If only we could call the whole thing off!

Equally off-putting is the provincial chauvinism of the elections coverage. For months, local media have said precious little about anything else. America’s pathological elections-time self-absorption makes a mockery of the idea that it is suited to lead the world. Shouldn’t a world leader take an interest in the world?

Mind you, McCain is interested in Mexico. When I was celebrating Independence Day, John McCain was campaigning there. Come September 16, 2008, I fully expect McCain to sound the El Grito de Dolores—"Mexicanos, viva Mexico"—in celebration of Mexican Independence. As I said, “Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto.”

But beggars can’t be choosers. With American freedoms on the wane, freedom lovers must contend with small pleasures. And there is some good news on the environmental front. As you know, the watermelons—greens on the outside, reds on the inside—intend to slow or sabotage the voluntary cooperation between men that makes the world go around—the free market. But in all the fretting these mutant Marxists are doing there is some solace for freedom lovers.

Global warming wombats are worried sick about the planet. Literally. They worry to the tune of serious rises in diastolic and systolic blood pressure. Ditto the little socialists they sire—the ones who star in saccharine sweet TV commercials for mandatory socialized medicine. Apparently some of these children are having night terrors due to “climageddon” bedtime stories.

And worse. From Australia comes a report in that country’s Journal of Psychiatry of the first case (that we know of) of “climate change delusion.” Or derangement. Writes Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun: “A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of depressed mood . ... He also . . . had visions of apocalyptic events. … The patient had … developed the belief that, due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths of millions of people through exhaustion of water supplies.”

The poor boy “became too terrified even to drink.” The lad is clearly a victim of the mythical thinking transmitted day-in-and-day-out by the adults in his life—untutored teachers, and uneducated parents and broadcasters to whom Al Gore’s heuristically unthinking docu-dabbling is dogma. Apparently, overexposure to obsessive, apocalyptic ideation can culminate in derangement.

Is this a case of child endangerment? An abuse of trust? I suspect so. It is certainly sad.

Part of me feels great sorrow for the boy. Part of me is fighting it. No part of me is willing to dissolve in a puddle of sympathy for those seeking to drop civilization down a black hole. Lefties, to whom nature is an exemplar of all that is fine and good, will be first to endorse the survival of the fittest as a guiding principle. As they like to say, nature knows best. Therefore, if the Worry Factor increases the rate at which this particular invasive species—genus environmentalist—is neutralized, well then, let nature take its course.

Sadly, the young are especially susceptible to the fantasies of the old. By the looks of it, “climageddon” has not restricted Gore’s fluids and food intake. Neither do the Other Two show signs of becoming less invasive.