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So having said, a while he stood, expecting
Their universal shout, and high applause,
To fill his ear; when, contrary, he hears
On all sides, from innumerable tongues,
A dismal universal hiss, the sound
Of public scorn; he wondered, but not long
Had leisure, wondering at himself now more;

For every apocalypse, there are harbingers of pending destruction. In the cinematic tour de force Dante's Peak, for example, dashing vulcanologist Pierce Brosnan finds dead animals and plants near the base of the dormant volcano threatening the suburban wonderland that was the titular town, even as he attempts to woo Sarah Connors. In The Day After Tomorrow, huge flocks of birds flew south just before the weather went even more bat-shit crazy than a District 6 congressional representative.

In real life, certain signs are available to the eagle-eyed as well. For one, the U.S. economy is holding together approximately as well as the plot of the latest Vin Diesel movie. In another clue to the possibility of pending Armageddon, a vise-presidential candidate for a campaign notorious for fascist devotion to staying on message presented the Iraq war as a holy crusade and raised the possibility of war with Russia in a single interview - always a good idea when the public is already edgy from the two wars currently being fought overseas. Not to mention the inadvisable nature of pointy stick diplomacy with a country that supplies our allies in Europe with a third of their oil and nearly half their natural gas.

And in the surest sign of the end times, Karl Rove - the man who helped engineer a stolen election, worked with George Bush to convince the American public that "these aren't the civil and privacy rights you're looking for," and perfected the art of the smear campaign by convincing most of the population that John McCain paid dearly for a case of jungle fever with a illegitimate black baby -announced his distaste on Fox News for the level of deception and depravity in the current presidential election.

What's truly depressing is that Rove's distaste serves as the most damning evidence imaginable that we deserve nothing more than a pending apocalypse.

Why are we in need of a biblical reset button? What could we, the innocent voting public, have done to deserve a global Red Ring of Death? Quite simply, we allowed it to happen. Both campaigns spew forth misdirection, half-truths and outright lies like so many money shots in a Jenna Jameson feature. And rather than rising in righteous indignation at the assumption that we're a nation of unthinking, couch-borne monstrosities too used to being spoon-fed viewpoints and factoids from whatever news outlet matches our political leanings best; incapable of even the basest critical thought, we simply smile and nod. The vast majority of us are taking at face value information on each candidate that comes directly from the least credible source - the opposition.

Rather than doing something that might even vaguely resemble a useful statement of position, followed shortly by proof points and specific planned policies, our candidates prefer to lead us traipsing merrily across a shit-strewn minefield of accusations and recriminations that do nothing but energize a base already convinced of the near divinity of their anointed candidate and convince undecided voters that virtually any vote they make is a vote for the lesser evil - as if choosing between a home in the deep South or a condo on the shores of Hell. Or perhaps, more realistically, between a strung out crack ‘ho from Saint Paul, or one from Minneapolis.

The heart of the problem is us - the electorate that, when polled, consistently states how frustrated it is with the negativity of the campaigns, yet when it comes time to vote, may he who has vomited forth a constant stream of putrid bile, detritus and Paris Hilton references win. It works because we let it. Rather than demand substantive political dialogue and offer political strategists a chance to be on the receiving end of the unlubricated rogering they've given the democratic process for the last three decades, we're all too happy to listen to politicians accuse each other of everything but being the anti-Christ - especially when the accusations back up our own tightly held beliefs. Though, to be honest, I've heard that the McCain household bears a distinct resemblance to that of the Thorns...

So when voters turn to Pamela Anderson, Lindsay Lohan and Chevy Chase for political acumen and advice, it becomes even more patently obvious that there's a dire need for someone to stride bravely forth and demand an end to the Obi-Wan Kenobi school of truth that requires a monumentally twisted world view to be construed as anything but gross obfuscation. An end to the mind-rending back and forth that informs no one and serves simply to fuel a never-ending masturbatory diatribe - much like the one you're reading right now. But since no mortal force has stepped forth, it's increasingly clear that forces greater than you and I, or even Scarlett Johansson's desperate unrequited love for Sen. Barack Obama, have stepped up in our stead to trigger the fall of man.

So look upon these end times and despair, gentle reader, for while you might imagine the righteous among us being whisked off to a higher plane of existence would leave us with a completely uncensored and unfettered Hollywood - free to bombard us with unrestrained nudity, violence and Quentin Tarantino cameos, you would be wrong. For the Jews have a free pass at The Rapture, and whither Hollywood without its Jews?