OK, I'm bitter. I lost my American flag lapel pin while I was rolling gutter balls at the bowling alley. And afterwards they were out of orange juice at the blue-collar diner where I go for my photo-opps with "Cup of Joe" Lieberman. Also, I don't own any guns so I can't bitterly cling to them or vent my anger on the few remaining critters within driving distance of the one tank of gas I can afford for my Hummer. And my flag lapel pin … honey, have you seen my flag lapel pin?! I can't go out in public without the flag lapel pin! That's like streaking!

Have you noticed we live in a stupid nation now? It's little wonder. We've had eight years of pure stupid in the White House. And during that time, we the people have been massaged by a stupid media, hectored by stupid hypocrites and stupid moralists, terrified by stupid extremists, pandered to by stupid politicians, lied to by military experts on the TV (see last Sunday's New York Times for details). It's the natural law of Stupid In/Stupid Out. Welcome to the United States of Stupidity.

MSNBC has recently reported on scientific efforts to decode "brain farts". Hunan subjects had their brains scanned as they performed a monotonous task - e.g., repeatedly pushing buttons that matched images flashed in front of them. Unexpectedly, before volunteers made errors, their brains started displaying "abnormal" behavior at time periods up to a half a minute before the error was made (1).

In other words, it is now possible to observe subtle changes in certain brain wave activities that precede the making of error, i.e, fuck-ups. These changes are believed to be the result of the brain attempting to save effort on a task. Such "brain farts" always precede a fuck up when one is doing something that one has done without error hundreds or thousands of times before. In other words, we have an inborn routine that guarantees that we will, sooner or later, fuck up.

The truth is as sad as it is revolting: You have been lied to, again and again, perhaps even more than you imagined, in a rather unexpected way, perhaps like no other time in American history, in a more carefully orchestrated and widespread effort than any presidential administration has managed to attempt in the past.

If Bush had even a hint of integrity, we'd never have launched this staggeringly botched, futile war in the first place, and maybe we wouldn't be where we are now, with the American experiment under Bush far less of an experiment and far more of a cyanide tablet.

I suspect that late at night, when no pesky outsiders are around to overhear, Hillary's advisers refer with knowing giggles to her campaign's latest strategy not as the "kitchen sink," but as a garbage disposal.

Just how much rubbish can they fabricate and feed to a gullible electorate? We're still finding that out, but I also suspect that Karl Rove sits somewhere in envy and admiration. Not even Bush & Co. debuted this much gall in 2000.

Hillary Clinton has already proved she’s more than willing to take her crusade as deep as necessary into the muck. In the fight for Pennsylvania, she vowed to “obliterate” Iran if necessary, didn’t flinch from running attack ads tying Obama to Osama, and readily joined in with Stephanopoulos and Gibson of ABC when they sandbagged Obama for his association with a graybeard former ’60s radical. It was an appalling enough performance that only hours after her Pennsylvania win, a New York Times editorial as much as unendorsed her, accusing Clinton of becoming “the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11,” running an ad “torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook.”

So we know what tack Clinton will take in the days to come. The ultranegative tone was set during her Pennsylvania victory speech, filled with adolescent mocking of Obama’s theme of hope. One can only imagine the millions of turned-off newly registered young Democrats who won’t vote for her even if she somehow steals the nomination.

Hillary Clinton isn’t going to drop out. There simply isn’t a function in her assembly code for throwing in the towel.

Obama, on the other hand, is fully capable of it. And if he’s really serious about representing a new kind of politics, now is the time for him to prove it in the only meaningful way left. Moreover, were he to play it right, dropping out now nearly guarantees that he’ll be elected president in 2012.

Nobody with a functioning memory should be too quick to condemn Jimmy Carter for daring to speak with the leadership of Hamas, as nearly everyone along the American political spectrum suddenly has felt obliged to do. From Condoleezza Rice and John McCain to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, along with every congressional backbencher in both parties, expressions of disapproval have rained down upon the former president, who is old enough and tough enough to pursue his own beliefs to their logical conclusion.

When Carter hosted the historic Camp David meetings that established peace between Israel and Egypt, the Jewish state’s prime minister was the late Menachem Begin, a former terrorist who firmly declared that he would never talk with Yasser Arafat and the PLO.

As the media coverage of the Democratic presidential race continues to focus on lapel pins and pastors, America is ailing. As I travel around the country, I find people are angry and motivated. Like Dr. Rocky White, a physician from a conservative, evangelical background who practices in rural Alamosa, Colo. A tall, gray-haired Westerner in black jeans, a crisp white shirt and a bolo tie, Dr. White is a leading advocate for single-payer health care. He wasn’t always.

He told me in a recent interview: “Here I am, a Republican, thinking about nationalizing health care. It just went against the grain of everything that I stood for.

Fear drives people to dogma, dogma drives people to stop thinking, both deliver people to leaders who promise to protect and to do good but will most likely do neither.