All Aboard the Express to National Meltdown

Yes, Sarah Palin performed swimmingly in her "debate"--and yes, media "analysis" of her performance broke down strictly along partisan lines (with an emphasis on "broke down"). A sultry blonde Dana Bash opined for CNN that Palin often refused to deal in details, citing her evading a question about which policy items she might soonest jettison under pressure. (But what kind of question is that? One might as well declare, "I'm not really convinced that these items have merit--I champion them because they play well with the base.") FOX was meanwhile effusing over Palin's winks to the camera, her "charisma"... but also, thankfully, pointing out that several of Biden's generous "details" were factually errant. I was particularly struck by Lunch-Bucket Joe's pronouncement, unimpeded by a complete absence of scientific credentials, that climate change is entirely man-made. It smacked of a religious zealot's to-the-death insistence upon a holy apparition's reality.

And yes, the congressional bail-out of the mortgage industry was a national disgrace and patently more damaging to our nation's remaining hopes of survival than 9/11. A bill that was found shamelessly spendthrift at 700 billion by the House became suddenly acceptable when 150 billion of regional bribe money was added. As we approach a blind turn, we have now forced the pedal to the metal.

And yes, once again the Chameleon President whose nominal party allegiance should have mobilized him to oppose government intrusion was growing statism's point guard, defending the bail-out on national television... and once again the presidential candidate who wanted to switch parties two years ago endorsed the Chameleon's position, while the candidate who waxes eloquent against "four more years of Bush" could find nothing to distinguish his shifty spots from the dorsal patterns on either of these reptiles.

And yes, nobody outside of Mexico is commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the slaughter of innocent, unarmed protesters--hundreds of them, including many women and children--during the Olympic Games in Mexico City by police and military units. Nobody in this country must be allowed to recognize that our southern neighbor has a long history of brutally tyrannizing over its masses, and that a fusion of its ways with our ways is likely to abrogate sacred American freedoms from numerous directions.

A busy week in the West's endgame... and some events were scrupulously observed and microscopically examined for "spin", while some disappeared behind the slamming drawer of a file cabinet. The common denominator, in all cases, is that the endgame proceeds. The public, highly controlled response, whether mock-analytical or trick-or-treat evanescent, is part of that endgame, descriptive of a culture that can no longer see or think straight. There's simply too much to write about these days, and too little reason to write about it. One is sometimes morally obligated to stand before a runaway train and be crushed... and then again, one is sometimes well advised just to keep one's family as far from the track as possible.

Me? I'm putting the finishing touches to an old baseball-card collection: that's my consuming interest for the moment. I know the train's crashing--and I'm not even going to look up. If there are survivors, maybe they'll live to see the day when they refuse to climb aboard another such train.