Maybe I gave that title to my second book a little too soon. A number of things I've read lately have me convinced we're becoming a nation of cultists, and the future doesn't look pretty. The global warming "hoaxers" think that climate change is a giant conspiracy (see related cartoon at left). Meanwhile, things are actually getting worse than people thought. Creationists are seizing on this public mistrust of scientists to advance their decades-old battle against the teaching of evolution. The Tea Party movement has channeled legitimate frustrations with the economy into a bizarre tangle of conspiracies against the federal government. And as Frank Rich put it, the most significant -- and ominous -- political event of February was Joseph Stack flying his plane into an IRS building, killing an employee, and being lionized in some quarters as a hero. All of this, of course, is goaded on by hyperspecialized political media that convinces people of their own reality bubble, and the incendiary rhetoric of pundits like Glenn Beck.

We truly do seem to be entering a new Dark Age, even worse than the morass of the Bush years. The country is deeply confused and heavily armed. Throw in several more years of economic failure, and you've got a recipe for disaster. Not to be a downer or anything.