The madness that has become our culture is head-throbbing. Common sense is gone, at least among most of the so-called government leaders, opinion-makers and many ordinary citizens. Political correctness has been invented to stifle objective thought, facts and normal discourse. Entitlement has replaced responsibility and motivation.

The world has, in less than half a century, been turned upside down in terms of beliefs. This transformation is akin to stepping into an episode of “The Twilight Zone.” For those not old enough to understand, think in terms of George Costanza’s “Bizzaro World.”

David Solway discusses what he considers the three biggest scams of our time. According to him, these are

1. The Palestinian Faux Narrative Scam
2. Global Warming or Climate Change
3. Barack Hussein Obama

I have been following the ascent of Barack Obama from early in the Democratic primaries—when he surfed on a wave of clichés, bromides, plagiarisms, gaffes, promises, and outright fabrications to the nomination—up to the present moment when he began to be exposed as arguably the most disingenuous and destructive president in the history of the United States. I found it hard to believe that he had succeeded in conning the majority of his countrymen (and much of the West). True, he enjoyed the material assistance of the consensus media in what was both a massive cover-up of his dubious formative and intellectual influences and an equally massive promotional campaign. Nonetheless, how a largely unvetted nonentity with a winning manner could so effectively beguile even a dumbed-down electorate is nothing short of grotesque.

I am not an American and can scarcely regard myself as a political wonk or legitimate pundit—my interests lie elsewhere—yet even from a distance it seemed obvious to me four years ago that Obama was an arrant fraud, an Alinsky-inspired subversive, a far-Left politicopath of obscure provenance intimate with a host of tainted mentors and friends, and ultimately a greater threat to his nation than Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez, Osama bin Laden, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. One did not need to be Argus-eyed to spot the glaringly inescapable, unless one were either thoroughly indoctrinated or suicidally delusional.

The latest revelation about Obama’s lack of candor—to put it mildly—has reconfirmed the intuition that he was a scoundrel from the get-go. “[T]he thirty eight documented falsehoods in the president’s memoir Dreams from My Father…revealed by David Maraniss’s new book Barack Obama: The Story,” writes Roger Simon, make it clear that “the president is a liar.” Edward Klein’s just-published The Amateur, garnished with a trove of insider information, only reaffirms that this president is quite possibly the shallowest, least prepared, and most self-infatuated, mercurial, and duplicitous man ever to sit in the Oval Office, bar none. Nixon, Carter, and Clinton seem like choirboys in comparison.

And yet, the man who has broken nearly every campaign promise; who has turned the White House into a banquet hall; who has led his nation to the brink of insolvency; who thrives on class warfare; who has placed a major portion of his resumé under seal; whose publicity bio for his first (and unpublished) book gave his birthplace as Kenya and was not revised until shortly after he declared his bid for the presidency sixteen years later; who often appears to prefer golfing to governing and debases the gravity of his office with tasteless and frivolous performances on late-night comedy television; who flouts Congress with impunity; who passes major legislation in the dead of night; who plainly has no love for the American Constitution; who ties up industry and commerce with senseless regulations; who is not averse to ceding national authority to the United Nations; who labors to import the collapsing European social model of economic syndicalism, public sector expansion, and dirigiste supervision into American life; who promotes the fortunes of the Muslim Brotherhood, thus imperiling American security and national interests; who relies on the possibly illegitimate exercise of executive privilege to suppress critical intelligence, as in the “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal, while at the same time apparently leaking sensitive data to the press in order to augment his image; who prosecutes whistleblowers under the 1917 Espionage Act; who instructs his Department of Justice to sue states intent on cleaning up the electoral rolls peppered with dead, illegal, and multiple voters (who will obviously cast their ballots for the Democrats); and who has alienated America’s traditional allies and befriended its most feral enemies—this man continues to bask in significant acclaim and support. He may even be re-elected, despite the fact that Obama in his very person represents and embodies the greatest—and most transparent—scam the presidency has ever suffered.

Andrew Klavan justly remarks in an article deploring the president’s egregious lack of character: “Again and again, he reveals himself to be wholly a product of the anti-American, anti-liberal and anti-democratic left at odds with the principles of our founding.” Still, sentient human beings will continue to vote for him. There is only one word for this: unbelievable.

The madness, hypocrisy, and outright stupidity that are sweeping the world almost defy comprehension. The Palestinian faux “narrative,” the environmental craze, and the Obama myth are the three great examples of the way the flimflam racket works, predicated on the self-interest of the ruseful idiots who know how to game the system, the malfeasance of a politically indoctrinated media imperium, and the gullibility of a mass popular audience lobotomized into compliance by a failing intellectual culture.

In light of electing this shadowy, shallow figure to the highest office of the land and the very real possibility that he might be re-elected, how much hope can there be for a return of this nation to its former greatness?

A recent piece on this blog dealt with how H. L. Mencken would explain the phenomenon of Barack Obama. As you might guess, the old curmudgeon would not be impressed or surprised. Barack Obama would confirm the low esteem in which he held the electorate.

In American Thinker William Gensert speculated on what a second term of President Obama would be like. His conclusions included the following:

To sum up, in Barack II, he will cut out coal and oil, diminish natural gas, and forbid nuclear power.  Electric bills will skyrocket, and the nation will face rolling blackouts.  Gasoline will become even more unaffordable than it is already.

The double-whammy of high transportation and energy costs will tank the economy, and jobs will become even scarcer than they are already.  In short, we will have been fundamentally transformed into a third-world country.

It’s coming, but like everything for Barack, it’s scheduled for…again…after the election.  And all this, he will do by himself.  Because when you are transformative, you don’t have to abide by the Constitution, separation of powers, checks and balances, and judicial review.  Executive fiat will be sufficient.

Mr. Gensert’s expectations are entirely consistent with Obama’s words and actions from his first campaign and first term. After re-election he will have no reason to hold back as he will never run for office again.

Recognizing the reasonableness of these expectations and combining them with a disastrous first term, how does one account for the possibility that Mr. Obama has a reasonable chance to be re-elected? For many, he is considered hands-down the worst performing president in modern times. The fact that this question can be asked is proof-positive of how far this once-great country has deteriorated. Politics has become entertainment. The same intelligence exhibited in top-rated TV shows (American Idol, Jersey Shore, reality TV, etc.) is reflected in election outcomes. In Mr. Mencken’s words:

Democracy is a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.

The threat to this country is not the fraud that inhabits the White House today. He is merely a symptom of a deeper and more serious problem. The problem is the fools who put him in office. They have learned nothing and will undoubtedly repeat their mistake, if not in the immediate election, in one not far away. As Mencken observed:

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

There is a cure for stupid Presidents. Vote them out of office. Unfortunately, stupid Presidents are merely symptoms. Like a fever can be a symptom of a more serious condition, a stupid president is a symptom of a stupid electorate. Treating the fever may provide temporary relief, but it does not cure the patient. Likewise, voting the president out of office does not cure the cancer that afflicts the electorate.

There is no known cure for a stupid electorate save perhaps education. If we had decent schools, that would take at least a generation or two for idiocy to be wiped out.    No politician is interested in an educated electorate. Even if they were, it would take several generations to achieve an enlightened electorate. That is not time that we have. There will be a systemic collapse before then.

Obama may or may not win re-election. Even if he is defeated, there is little reason to for happiness. The fever will go down, but it is merely a symptom. Perhaps this symptom can even be controlled for a term or two. But the underlying disease, the cause of the fever, is below the surface untouched and uncured. The pathology has not been touched and it will eventually manifest in an even worse president.

There is no cure for this disease, at least within the critical time frame.