believin all the lies that they're tellin' ya - buyin' all the products that they're sellin ya - they say jump and ya say how high - ya brain dead - ya got a fuckin bullet in ya head

Top five fucked up things that this election taught me about our country:

5. Truth is irrelevant. Consistency is the new truth. Lies are fine as long as you stay on message. If the president says we're making progress in Iraq and people believe no matter how much empirical evidence says otherwise.

4. Fear sells. If you show people pictures of wolves while implying that your opponent isn't interested in protecting America and people will believe it. Don't worry about plausibility (see 5 above) the more evocative the image the less facts matter. All you have to do is talk about weapons of mass destruction in the center of American cities. The people that live in those cities won't believe a damn word of it, the people who have never lived in one will and that's enough (see 2 below).

3. Education has no currency. Stupid is the new smart. Stammer like a jackass, make up words, and dangle participles like they're Michael Jackson's kids. You'll be accepted as folksy and warm. People will rave about how you can "work a room."

2. National Elections are easy. If you want to win all you need to do is find the people in the cultural and commercial centers, those that live in relative harmony in ethnically diverse areas, the places that generate the ideas and art that captivate the nation, the ones that export the nation's cultural capital to not just the nation, but the world. Now that you've found these people fuck them as hard as you can. They don't matter. Presto. You've found a majority.

1. Morality is the new hate. A president can dump copious amounts of toxins into our environment, lie to the nation to sell an unnecessary war, mismanage said war, run up record deficits (despite his claims to be a fiscal conservative), and be the first president to lose jobs in eighty years. It doesn't matter. All he has to do is find the most villainized minority in our culture, tell everyone that he wants to take away rights that they mostly don't have anyway and virtually every basic salt of the earth churchgoing person in the nation will vote for him becaues "moral values" are their most important issue.