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I know entertainment, and that's no entertainment. Odd how the "Shut up, lowly entertainer" rhetoric consistently levelled at Sean Penn and the Dixie Chicks manages never to apply to Arnold Schwarzenegger, even when he attends a multibillion dollar fireworks display and filet mignon barbecue in Baghdad. But inconsistent logic, presented as inarguable truth, now pops up everywhere and is indeed a hallmark of these times. Even among the grunts in the embattled town Arnold visited:

"You think about it every day. You know they don't want us here," said [Army Spc. Irvin] Spencer, sitting on a concrete block with a pack of Newport cigarettes tucked into his waistband. "I don't get these people. We're here to help and they shoot at us."

Spencer's friend, Spc. Byron Aiken, 27, of Converse, Texas, said he had no problem putting his life on the line for the sake of the U.S. mission here. But he wished the Iraqis appreciated his work.

"It's time for us to go," Aiken said, an M-16 rifle propped between his knees. "As long as we stay here, we'll keep dying. They just don't want their country run by Americans."

The hostility to Sean Penn and the warm welcome for Arnold Schwarzenegger have nothing to do with their status as entertainers. They reflect the growing American inability to think consistent thoughts of any kind — about entertainers and other frauds in politics, about tangible reasons for war, about the vested interests and commercial motivations of those in office, about the value of soldiers' and civilians' lives, about impeachable offenses.

We are losing the war on stupidity.

{ 7:20 AM }

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