Something Wicked This Way Comes......

  I love Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451 was the first novel that I ever read and loved. He is the reason why I became an avid reader, an author who gave purpose to my burying my face into novel after novel. He wrote a book in 1962 titled "Something Wicked This Way Comes". If you've never read the novel, it is a story about two young boys who have a dark encounter with an evil traveling carnival that comes to their little Midwestern town. I remember how terrified I was reading that book as a young 13 year old, and how I never got the image out of my head of that strange lightening rod salesman foreshadowing the storm that was soon to ravage their small community. Foreboding. Prognostication as the traveling salesman in The Wizard of Oz would say. That is what I have been experiencing for the past few years, but now the feeling comes at an accelerated pace.
  When Georgie W. was elected back in 2000, I remember turning to my wife that agonizing November morning and telling her that when this man leaves office the world would be a different place. Now, Nostradamus I ain't, and I don't think that you have to be a seer to have made that prediction, but I think everyone can agree that the world is a very different place. It was then when I first thought about that mysterious lightening rod salesman warning of the impending storm. Now I feel as  though the carnival has arrived and G.M Dark is here.

  I didn't think that it could possibly be worse after Bush left office, but as I look around and see what is going on in this country I realize that it has. We have a president who is is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. A man who is the American dream. A working class kid who worked his way to be President of the United States of America, right? Wrong. There is a large portion of the population who believe that he is a Muslim terrorist who is bent on destroying the country. They believe that health care for all Americans is Marxism. They believe we should abolish the 14th amendment to the constitution. They believe that the Bush tax cuts stimulate the economy when every economist in the world tells them that they do not. They believe that all Muslims are terrorists. They believe that Liberals are the enemy and should be destroyed. They Believe that Ronald Reagan was the greatest President this country ever had. But what they actually believe is whatever Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck tells them to believe. The evil carnival that rolled into town is Fox News and they ain't goin' nowhere.
  Now, I am not the smartest guy in the room by a long shot but I sure feel like I am when I watch Glenn Beck. As I suffer through his inane diatribes, I find my head slowly cocking to the right, like my dog does when he's watching a bug on the wall. While my dog Louie tries to wrap his mind around how that bug crawls up that wall and how it might taste, I wonder how how anyone with an I.Q over 11 can possibly listen to this drivel let alone actually take it seriously. He is a wild eyed carnival barker compelling his dullard audience to enter the tent to view the freak show that he has gathered. The rabid illegal immigrant out to rob and kill you then steal your job. The Despicable Muslim who will force your wife to wear a burka while he pisses on the American flag. The filthy African president who wants to turn our wonderful country into a Stalinist state.
  I'd like to think that it is just a vocal minority who Fox panders to, but alas it is not. I have friends and family who share some of these insane views. These are sane, educated people.  And yet these kind gentle-hearted people  suddenly change when the name Barrack Hussein Obama is muttered. It's like I have suddenly slipped a hot steamy turd under their nose as they wince at the name. I feel as though they have become entranced by the carnival barker and nothing that I say can break the spell. I explain how they are being duped and present them with facts and evidence that shows how the Blowhards from Fox are manipulating them, but nothing seems to matter. I tell them to read Paul Krugman, and Jonathan Alter. To watch the BBC and God forbid perhaps listen to Rachael Maddow!!! I am told that they are all liberals and that I am biased. I hang my head in sadness and frustration.
  The storm has passed. The carnival has pitched its tents and lit its midway. The madness though, is just beginning.