Fear

Some Halloween thoughts from Bill Maher.

And finally, New Rule: This Halloween, every time you see something that's supposed to scare you, like a skeleton or a severed head or a gay wizard--take a moment and think about fear. What are you afraid of? What should you be afraid of? What's really scary this Halloween is that the same group of idea-free losers who won the last presidential election could win the next one, by making us afraid of the wrong things. Which is why this year for Halloween, I'm going as something truly horrifying: a melting polar icecap. And I have the costume right here. [he puts "Melting polar icecap" on his head] What do think about it? Hmm? That's going to be my Halloween costume.

All right. Now, this week, as every week, all the Republican candidates talked about was who was the toughest in the war on terror. While the country's most populace state literally burned. The Democrats, as usual, said nothing, because they didn't want to offend fire.

The Republicans, including the "Scaremonger in Chief," sell themselves as our protectors. But it's always from fears they made up, like Iran. [with mock horror] "And their leader in Iran, who is pure evil. Ahmadinejad! Terror has a new name...and it's nearly unpronounceable."

At the Republican debate this week, Mike Huckabee said, "Islamofascism is the greatest threat we ever faced." Really? More than the Nazis, and the Russians and the Redcoats? In his latest ad, Mitt Romney warns eerily that Muslim jihadists want to establish an Islamic caliphate covering the whole world, including America. Yes, and I want to be adopted by Angelina Jolie.

And you thought the people who were scared of gays and Mexicans were paranoid. Islamic terrorists taking over America? They can barely get across the monkey bars. Our defense budget is $600 billion a year. They're using guns they took off a dead Soviet in 1981. I think we can hold Charleston.

We are the most powerful nation on earth, with the largest economy and the best military. And we're made to act the fool by a few thousand cave dwellers who still put out their video on VHS!

And that's the problem. Because of the incompetence that goes by the name George Bush--we have become the most insecure, paranoid superpower ever. We don't think we can get anything right anymore. We can't take care of our own citizens after a hurricane, or plan for our wars, or maintain our infrastructure. And our celebrity rehab facilities obviously aren't working at all.

As a species, we are failing at survival trick number one: prioritize the threats. Environmental catastrophe is going to visit all of us in the coming decades in one way or another, and when it does, I hope people like - oh, I don't know, Lou Dobbs - says to himself, "Huh, maybe if I was going to spend my whole career obsessing about one issue, it should have been global warming. My skin just fell off my face, and it turns out that really wasn't the fault of a Mexican."