Republican candidates in a race to the bottom of the intellectual barrel

There are days, actually a lot of days, when I feel as though I’m living in a nightmare of collective insanity. Everywhere I turn in this dark theatre, there is someone on stage saying things that are incomprehensibly stupid, but the audience applauds as if he or she is the president of MENSA. In my nightmare, ignorance is rewarded and knowledge debased.

I feel that way after reading a quote from Republican presidential contender Ben Carson. In a CNN interview, he said that homosexuality was absolutely a choice. How does he know this?

"A lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight — and when they come out, they're gay. So, did something happen while they were in there? Ask yourself that question," he said.

This may sound like something one of the Duck Dynasty hillbillies might say, but Ben Carson isn’t some backwoods hick with a microphone, he’s a freaking neurosurgeon!  A brain surgeon! Here is a highly educated man, a serious contender for the most important job in America espousing views that make Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne sound like Harvard professors.

Of course, he’s only doing what he has to do to win the approval of the intellectually stunted, rage-filled Tea Baggers who have taken control of his party. That fact alone tells you a tremendous amount about the quality of political discourse in America in the twenty-first century. One of our two major political parties has forsaken reality for a fantasyland built on a foundation of wishful thinking, anger, superstition and bigotry. It’s their dream world, but to everyone else it’s a living nightmare.