The United States and Europe are on the verge of a massive financial collapse, unemployment is rampant, Western societies are being torn apart, and global leadership is the most inept in many generations, so what is the major concern of the American left and the media? 

For the left, it is the preservation of their lifestyle and political power against an imaginary right-wing horde of Republican presidential candidates determined to impose a theocracy.  For the mainstream media, it is reporting on the upcoming election as if it was a sporting event between the good (the Democrats) versus the evil (the Republicans).

To the left, Christianity is the source of much of mankind's problems, as it lays out a definitive path and rules of restraint that have little room for licentious and unbridled behavior, but more importantly does not recognize the unbridled superiority of the state above all things.  The left believes, being intellectually superior and pre-ordained to govern, that they can set and impose their rules on the rest of society.  Christianity and its forerunner, Judaism, recognize that the human race is flawed, beset with enormous failings -- among them a overweening sense of self-importance -- and offers a Supreme Being superior to the state along with a definitive set of principles governing human behavior.

In an overwhelmingly prosperous society, one that has not experienced any major adversity in over seven decades, the ground is fertile for the abandonment of unpleasant religion-based guidelines which would undermine the narcissism, greed, and lust for power rampant among many.  Therefore, those who espouse traditional Christianity must be portrayed as loons, zealots, and out of the mainstream, in order to frighten a majority of the voting populace into believing that these are very dangerous people out to create a theocracy, akin to a fundamentalist Islamic state, in America.

Thus the slandering of the conservatives has accelerated.  American newspapers, websites, and news shows have been awash with stories about the religion of various Republican presidential candidates.  Michele Bachmann, in an egregious article in the New Yorker, was portrayed as a fanatical religious wingnut.  She and Rick Perry have been labeled followers of Dominionism -- the belief that God gave Christians authority over all things on earth.  An absurd and false reading of the tenets of Christianity, but one that fits into the left-wing narrative of those who profess their Christian beliefs together with a conservative political philosophy and are foolish enough to run for political office.

Michelle Goldberg, writing in the Daily Beast, compared Dominionism to fundamentalist Islam and further postulated that conservatives and the Republican Party were engaged in an "all-out assault" on the separation of church and state.  In furtherance of the narrative of the danger of Christian fanatics, Bill Keller in the New York Times tells us: "I care a lot if a candidate is going to be a Trojan horse for a sect that believes it has divine instructions on how we should be governed."  He then proceeds to trot out the usual threadbare innuendos about evangelical Christians (they love slavery and hate evolution and never miss an opportunity to bash gays and shoot abortionists).  But he then adds, "Neither Bachmann nor Perry, as far as I know, pledged allegiance to the Dominionists."  Why then do he and his fellow-travelers infer that the candidates have?  The answer is obvious.

In the meantime, Nancy Pelosi is free to invoke her Catholicism whenever politically expedient, even to the point of opining on church doctrine as if she were an ordained theologian; black churches are overrun by Democratic presidential candidates every four years; and for over twenty years, Barack Obama was part of a congregation headed by a pastor who actively hates America.  Mitt Romney can be castigated and his Mormon faith impugned as a cult, but Harry Reid, also a Mormon, is given a free pass and is untouchable because he is a Democrat.

The overwhelming majority of Democrat politicians, in order to win elections and garner the financial support of the left, have acquiesced to the lifestyle demands of the "progressives" side-by-side with an implicit acknowledgement that the state is the true God.  Their nod toward religion is merely a cosmetic effort in order to fool the people in the United States, the majority of whom still profess their religion.  On the other hand, conservatives are, for the most part, genuine in their belief that God is superior to the state.  The ascendancy of conservative Republicans into the control of all levers of political power would doom the left and their dream of a socialist utopia controlled by them.

It matters little what the current or future landscape of the country or world may be; many on the left would tacitly accept a complete societal and financial collapse as long as they, in their addled thought process, maintained their pre-ordained dominance.  However, they are too adolescent to believe and understand that the worst could happen in America.  Thus no lie is too big to tell, no innuendo too egregious to promote, and no political tactic out of bounds in order to achieve and maintain power, the welfare of the American people and the United States be damned.

The foot-soldiers of the mainstream media, complicit in promoting the left-wing agenda, do so out of basic ignorance and naiveté.  They too have, for the most part, fallen for the siren song of the absolute need to protect their lifestyle against the theocratic horde descending on society, thus they promote the agenda of the left regardless of its ultimate objective or the reality of its failures.

Over the past half-century, the mainstream media narrative during all presidential election seasons has been whether candidate A (a Republican) was a dangerous ideologue as compared to candidate B (a Democrat) who was a reasonable person out to make this a supposedly just and fair society.  Using this basic premise, each election season has become mired in reporting akin to that of a sporting event, pitting one team against another, and who scored more points by destroying the reputation and integrity of the other; the importance of the contest is lost amid the cheerleading from the press box.

This scenario is being repeated this election season.  However, this is not the country of thirty, twenty, or even ten years ago.  The United States, as it has spent and printed so much money over the past three years, has virtually no fall-back available to combat another severe recession; unemployment is destined to remain above a non-manipulated ten to twelve percent for as far as the eye can see; and the Middle East, the Balkans of the 21^st century, has become a tinderbox for a potential global conflict.  A global financial meltdown looms.

This cannot be an election season as usual.  The members of the media, the true-believers on the left, and their dupes among the general citizenry will also have to live in a world plagued by the current crises they helped create.  It is time to grow up, put aside the toys and games, and understand what is happening around them.  As a survivor of World War II, I can attest that despite the overwhelming seven decades of peace and prosperity the United States has been blessed to enjoy, the worst can and will happen here if the left and the media manipulate the country into continuing on its current blissfully ignorant and self-destructive path.