Okay, so this isn’t a long-winded post about atheism or searching for truth, beauty and justice. Well, actually, I’ll reserve the right to be long-winded.

Here we are, 55 days from the next American Presidential election, and we’re talking about lipstick on a pig.

Idiocracy (the movie) cuts a pretty fine approximation to reality, at this point. We are devolving to a nation of idiots, focused on media and celebrity. “Look! Sarah Palin’s signing autographs!” I occasionally reveal my pessimistic side to close friends, so gather close and hear: The ouevre which is America… liberty, justice, female right to vote, secular nation devoted to laws not men… all of that is like a solar flare.

You’ve seen closeup images of the sun? Occasionally a blast of fusion powered heat leaps from Sol’s breast and aspires to escape the furnace. Inevitably, the extrusion of fiery menace falls back to the surface, to boil and roil again. We, too, are like this: 250 years of Enlightenment dragging the mass of humanity out of the muck, into a better world of freedom, we now fall helplessly back to the mean of humanity. Take “mean” any way you like.

It could be depressing… if you have no sense of history and an appreciation that the Enlightenment arose from the ashes of the Inquisition. Oh Good! If I just wait 450 years, this will all blow over and another solar flare may take humanity farther into a fair, just, advanced, enlightened world.