A friend of mine sent me this article, about residents of Minneapolis eating sushi off otherwise naked people, and paying extra for the privilege.  He saw it as a possible sign of the apocalypse.  Either that, or an explanation of how Bill Clinton was reelected, and of why some are still defending Elliot Spitzer.  (Personally, I thought that seeing sushi sold at baseball games was a sign of the apocalypse, but this is even stranger than that).

Today, John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, goes to the White House to get the endorsement of George W. Bush.  The indispensable Steve Sailer has summed up the madness of neoconservative policy in one lapidary phrase:  Invade the World, Invite the World, In Hock to the World.  John McCain promises to be just as stubborn in pursuit of these insane policies as Bush has been:  he has professed indifference as to whether American troops remain in Iraq for 100 years and entertained a campaign audience by singing “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.”  He co-sponsored the amnesty bill in the Senate and has regularly denounced those opposed to mass immigration as “xenophobes” and “racists,” and he remains a free trade zealot, even in the face of massive trade deficits and a plunging dollar.  McCain appears to want to wage more wars we can’t afford, erase the border with Mexico, and preside over the continued deindustrialization of America.

George Bush’s failure as president has been so obvious that even his cheerleaders in the Beltway Right have put down their pom-poms.  There is no reason to believe that, if McCain is elected, he will be anything other than another failed president.  But the Beltway Right is beginning to pick up the pom-poms again, hoping for jobs in and goodies from a prospective McCain Administration.  Of course, there is no reason to expect anything better from the Democrats.  But no conservative should be at all sanguine about the Republican nominee and what he will do if elected.

As lucky fate would have it, just one day after I wrote about the bizarre fixation of contemporary conservatives with the defunct ideology of “fascism,” Jonah Goldberg, who has done all he can to encourage this fixation, begins to see the light.  Writing at his weblog, Goldberg, following a forum at Trinity College, expresses sympathy for the view that “fascism is [a] specifically historical phenomenon having no surviving corollary today” and states, “Basically, I would be perfectly happy to inter the word ‘fascist’ forever.”  Writing a tome on “Liberal Fascism” is a strange way to stop stupid accusations of “fascism,” but we should welcome Goldberg’s newfound wisdom, which he could have acquired far more easily than traveling to Trinity College by coming here to Taki’s. Of course, if Goldberg wants to put his newfound wisdom to use, he can begin by denouncing neocon blowhards who like to accuse paleoconservatives of “fascism.” 

Despite my criticisms of Christopher Hitchens, I have readily conceded that the man knows how to write, and that he is occasionally even right.  His Slate column today on our impoverished political discourse represents just such a broken clock moment:  http://www.slate.com/id/2185606