On the Primary Campaign Trail in South Carolina, fear permeates and desperation is everywhere.

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By Stewart Nusbaumer

Columbia, South Carolina -- Life has its vicious contractions, ridiculous oxymorons, and hilarious impossibilities. Seldom, however, are they bundled together into one outrageous package. Underestimating the mysterious mental illness residing in the whacked brains of editors is a serious mistake. These people don't need drugs, they need brains.

"Drop me a note or post as a diary or article or a series of stories on how to love a right winger," was my editor's latest light bulb of insanity, "Oh, and have a great day."

Love a right winger? Have a great day? Sure, no problem. Editors get their kicks in life by handing out impossible assignments to their helpless, exploited scribblers. And I just got mine. 

OK, first you need to start the day on a cold metal operating table, preferably with health insurance. You will need a quick lobotomy! But don't worry about lunch. With cognition ripped from your mental capacity you'll have no complaints about lunch. Even the spinach that has turned orange! As for the sadistic nurses chatting away down the hall, ignoring your screams and incoherent begging -- what is left of your brain will feel like it's being blowtorched -- no problem. Morality doesn't exist for you anymore, like it never existed for those nurses. Without the ability to think, your ability to make moral judgments has vanished. So the nurses will ignore you.  

But let's look at the good side. Feelings such as compassion and empathy and love are now nonexistent. Thoughts like justice and freedom and progress are completely gone. You're no longer bothered by silly idealism. You are now free! You are in the Land of the Free!

Within a week of your liberating lobotomy, you will be assigned a handler who will lead you around the grounds of your new and very limited mental compound. You will learn to love the words of your "brother." Although unable to understand why, you will accept everything wrong is your fault and that you need to be punished. And most important, you will accept without question -- no problem, since you can no longer question -- there is a compassionate and loving God who is thinking about you. Sure God will zap you if you even have the slightest sliver of the thought that maybe God isn't always so nice, but you will remember -- although remembering anything isn't really possible anymore -- God is always fair. 

I'm sure that by this point you are following right along with me and understanding how we can love right-wingers. All you have to do is cut yourself off from your humanity. This can be done on a hospital operating table or in a church pew or on the sofa watching FOX News. They all wield razor-sharp scalpels to reduce you to an ugly beast in the jungle of mindless society.

In America today, separation from what makes us human is not really a problem -- well, for half of Americans. That half obsessed with religion and babbling on and on about Jesus Christ while getting their straightjacket propaganda through an ideological straw on one dimwitted TV channel. These are the Americans who year after year are successful – stunningly successful, I should add -- in separating themselves from brain and morality as they walk around fuming with hate and have plastered on their face a crap-eating smile. You know that look.

And now you know why Red America is called Red America. It's from the blood of the American operating table.

It's early and I'm sitting at a corner table in a nearly empty café. Nearby eleven men sit around several tables pulled together. Their discussion circles the table, each man has an opportunity to speak. Speak about what? Speak about what they should pray for. One man wants everyone to pray for his neighbor, who is having financial and emotional problems. Another man wants everyone to pray for a woman who is going to Africa as a missionary. Another man, sitting at the top of the table and who appears to be the discussion leader, complains the IRS is hounding him. I guess he wants everyone to pray that the IRS is quickly vaporized. Eventually all eleven men bow their heads and pray.

"I used to think getting here at 7 AM was horrible," a short man with a large black mustache says, "now I run here every morning!"

"We are all in the same trial and tribulations," says a heavy set man with baseball cap pulled low. "We are together in this, brothers!"

"God is always here," another man interjects.   

What I find most upsetting about these men is they look so normal. They sound rational, even articulate. The fact is, I can't see their lobotomies! No scares on the outside, only devastation on the inside. Raging madness concealed behind the appearance of normality. What can be more scary? 

"Do you believe in Jesus Christ?" a man dressed in a suit with a Marine Corps lapel pin asks walking past me. I look into his glowing blue eyes. "If the Lord tells you to do something--"

"I'm a heathen, sir" I snap back with agnostic New York accent. "And I like it. Good day!"   

The men file out and into their cars, and on the left side of each bumper is a yellow and red sticker: "Huckabee for President." 

South Carolina is the epicenter of the lobotomized. How do I know this? Nearly half of the population, more than any other state in our country, is evangelicals. I understand that I sound rather intolerant, but intolerance comes from fear. And I fear for my country. I fear theocracy is just around the corner. I fear another "God-fearing" president will send young Americans afraid of dying to another unnecessary, immoral war to die. I fear "the land of the free" will soon be the land of the slavery. I fear that all this is being led by the American South, by a religious movement separated from brain and morality, by a part of our country that is not really a part of our country, by people unable to understand the words of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin -- that we need to stay out of other countries endless conflicts and we need to jealously guard our own freedoms at home. I fear these dangerous aliens living in America.

In South Carolina today is the Republican Primary. There are only three candidates. Forget Ron Paul, although now loaded with money he is hardly here. Forget Mitt Romney, the Yankee business executive did not wear well in the business of the Southern God. The three are John McCain, Mike Huckabee, and Fred Thompson. They are the American super-patriotic, supposedly, the Southern minister, and the Southern good old boy. They are the warped warrior and scary preacher and weird actor all dangerously united in the belief that America needs, as those eleven men in café said, "America needs to return to the ways of God."

But their God is not a good God, their God is angry, and even stupid. It's not surprising that the men in the café possessed that terrifying unholy combination of fire in their eyes and blowtorched minds. Certain they are right and God is their protector, they view America is a battleground where they must fight absolute evil which is quickly enveloping their country. An evil that is attempting to steal their kids, destroy their culture, an evil that at all costs must be crushed. This evil is, of course, you and me.

No, these fanatics are not satisfied with being "enlightened" by the words of God, they want to save America and cut your brain out and stomp every moral scruple gasping for a final breath. Yes, I fear them. And you should too!

So who will win today? I don't care. True I'm covering the campaign trail, or it's covering me (as Michael Herr once wrote about the Vietnam War). Iowa was certainly exciting. I still can't fully believe a Black man (well, half Black) won in a state that is 93 percent White! Is this the dawn of a new America? And New Hampshire was, as it is every four years, an outrageous, wild circus. The media was out of control, voters were intelligent and moral, outrageous demonstrations blanked Manchester. New Hampshire was American grassroots democracy at its best. Michigan was a blur. Not even sure I was there. Still, the older I get the more I appreciate these blurs. When the energy starts to dip, the brain kicks in. Thinking is good. Even when thinking is a blur. 

Now it's the "First in the South," the South Carolina Primary. And I have lost my enthusiasm. Lost it somewhere in America. McCain's religious obsession is war, winning the Vietnam War in Iraq. Huckabee says we need to amend the Constitution to make it conform to God's words. Thompson -- well, the worse thing about Thompson is he might wake up. It's hard to get excited about lobotomies campaigning for the highest office in the land. 

Yet, tonight I'm going to the Huckabee and Thompson South Carolina Primary Night blowouts. I'll be there armed with truth, but more important, I'll be carrying my own blowtorching intolerance. And I will love every one of these right-winger religious nuts just to make my whacked editor happy. I'll be there, reporting from the epicenter of disaster and fear, and enjoying it all.  

Authors Bio:
Stewart Nusbaumer is a journalist and writer. He is currently on the campaign trail writing a book on the "endless campaign." He has written for numerous print publications and online magazines.