PARALLEL UNIVERSE

Parallel Universe

My wife and I are big fans of Lost. Two of our colleagues, the bloggers—ballsy femme fatale and conservative & proud kindel, got us hooked last fall. And we are addicted. So are countless others—pun intended.

My “magnum” brother-in-law, a quasi-conservative whom I had to practically bang over the head with a drumstick last Thanksgiving—he was trying to defend narcissistic Oedipus Lieberman, shortly before Oedipus morphed into Captain Lieberman—tells us that there’s a “parallel universe” theory circulating the blogsophere, which would partly explain the events and phenomena of Lost; I’ve got nothin’ but “penny” love for you, JT. My “Lost” experts, though, insist that that’s not the case.

The jury might still be out on the parallel universe theory on Lost; however, the jury is in on the parallel universe in America: there are TWO AMERICAS. While some of us yearn to remain grounded in reality, OTHERS are being sucked via a wormhole into a fake-news universe, including most of the GOP Presidential contenders and the Republican Party.

Thursday night’s debate was a freak show and an utter disgrace to the dignity and statesmanship of what President Ronald Reagan represented—appreciate him or not. It’s too bad that these contenders desperately invoked his name countless times, a subliminal admission, a haunting refrain conveying that the Republican Party has LOST its way and much of America. Aside from the good Congressman Ron Paul, who was the only rational one of the bunch and the only Republican on-stage sincerely attempting to evoke the spirits of Reagan and conservative patriarch Senator Barry Goldwater, these contenders insulted—directly or indirectly—most Americans, including fellow Republicans.

From Nosferatu Giuliani’s flip-flopping on everything from abortion to national security, to porn-star named Mitt Romney’s Aldous Huxley segue into science-fiction and cloning, masking his own flip-flopping on issues and his latent contempt for Hillary Clinton’s hair colorist, from McCain’s pathetic, Viagra-induced charge that he would follow Osama-Bin-Gone to the “gates of hell,” to the non-log cabin homophobia and vehement contempt towards science (didn’t they look to see Nancy Reagan and Governor Terminator in the front row?), these candidates—with the exception of Paul—have boldly shown that the GOP has LOST its way.

This is not the party of my maternal grandmother—bless her soul. This is not the party of many conservatives and Republicans whom I know and respect, who believe in fiscal responsibility, limited government, PRIVACY, morals and values, and dignity. This is not the party of Reagan and Goldwater, conservative torchbearers with some sort of conscience and vision.

In this parallel universe of no real news, no conscience, no dignity—that many of them blatantly insulted a living, out-of-office president—President Clinton—was pathetic, no acknowledgment of reality here, there, or any where—in Iraq, in the middle class, or in the 21st Century for that matter, no clear understanding of what it means to be a conservative, Republican, Democrat—yes, we have our pull-down menu of identity problems, liberal, moderate, it’s obvious that as a nation we are certainly LOST. The question is, though: how do we jettison ourselves out of this parallel universe without getting stuck in a…wormhole?