Ted Rall: Mission Accomplished

Funding Battle Highlights American Embrace of Moronitude

ORLANDO--I'm against the war. Who isn't? (Maybe the two percent who tell The New York Times/CBS poll that Iraq is going "very well.") But this column isn't about the war. It's about logic.

In his new book Al Gore argues that Americans are losing the ability to, well, argue. "Reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions," claims the President-in-Internal-Exile. Never mind left versus right; irrationality has become so prevalent that outlandish jingoism and sentimental lunacy have displaced reason as the framework of our national dialogue. What passed for debate on the latest funding bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan makes a convincing case for Gore's thesis.