"The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded." — Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Star Wars: A New Hope"

The public’s ability to swallow year after year of COVID, race, gender, and Jan. 6 lies sits at the heart of the present darkness. Because we routinely stand for almost nothing, we will kneel to almost any con that Spirit of the Age sorcerers dish out.

Again and again and again.

I know how easy it is to believe that the more absurd things get, the closer we are to common sense inevitably kicking in. But that simply isn’t true. Zero plus zero doesn’t magically wake up and equal jackpot one day. And the moral math of perpetual civic disinterest plus cowardice plus recklessness is the same. It leads to chaos and only more chaos.

Democrats are clearly counting on that. It is in fact what they want in order to reset America. And in order to keep that crazy train running on time, they will do whatever it takes to keep people from getting any ideas about fighting back in order to recover lost ground. So cue up the propaganda.

What’s that? A documentary of President Biden’s first year in office narrated by the cosmically decent and trustworthy Tom Hanks to convince us all to Netflix and chill just a little while longer? That doesn’t sound fishy at all. But if I’m really honest, I’ve got to respect the brazen half-assedness of it all. I mean, they are reusing an idea that was lampooned in "The Simpsons" without any sense of shame or desperation at all. And why the hell not? They’ve done more with even less to get us to neuter ourselves in the past.

Democrats know they don’t have to be particularly good at any of this — just relentless. Because much of America is no better off as masters of their own destiny than your average junkie. Which stands in sharp contrast with the other group that Democrats need to control: their own base.

On that front, what we are dealing with, instead of junkies, is cultists. And where junkies are known for lethargy and distraction, cultists are known for militancy and a near-total lack of compromise. But it turns out that there may be too much of a good thing from the progressive perspective, as I am increasingly convinced this is what longtime Democrat strategist Paul Begala was trying to get at when he recently said it wasn’t his party’s leaders who are causing problems, but its followers.

I originally thought he was saying that the Democratic base needs to be better sheep, which I found incredulous, because if a not-insignificant portion of the Democratic base has shown anything these past 23 months, it’s that it knows how to follow. Even Democrat Bill Maher was rightly complaining recently how easily Democrats follow their own media to believe disinformation about COVID severity.

However, I now think Begala found himself looking into the mouth of one of the greatest midterm electoral landslides in American history come later this year and was thus signaling to his base that they have perfected the sheep thing a little too well.

You know, we want you crazy but not that crazy. On the one hand, there are zealous talking points used to bully and seduce for political advantage and power. On the other hand, there is "How strong do you like your Kool-Aid, Mr. Hale-Bopp?" And when many in the base of the Democratic Party now believe all the crazy COVID, race, gender, and Jan. 6 stuff right down to their bones and have mistaken political theater/flourish for theological ex cathedra, Begala seems to have a very real concern that the monster has become the master.

Never forget, Dr. Frankenstein always ends up hating the monster he created.

So there the Democrats stand, now needing to provide two very different narratives in order to keep two very different Americas pacified. One side wants “normal” and “nice” at any cost. The other wants to salt the earth with the tears of those people.

Fun game. See you in November ... if we last that long.