Perhaps you’ve felt some vague creeping unease lately, some indefinable sense of shuddering wrong — a worrisome suspicion not unlike that of having reason to believe that the real reason Arlen Specter is smiling on the C-Span is that he’s secretly wearing your underpants. Your favorite underpants. But the truth, my friends, is far more alarming.

Glenn Beck — he surrounds you.

Do you watch the direction that America is being taken in and feel powerless to stop it?

Do you believe that your voice isn’t loud enough to be heard above the noise anymore?

Do you read the headlines everyday and feel an empty pit in your stomach…as if you’re completely alone?

If so, then you’ve fallen for the Wizard of Oz lie. While the voices you hear in the distance may sound intimidating, as if they surround us from all sides—the reality is very different. Once you pull the curtain away you realize that there are only a few people pressing the buttons, and their voices are weak. The truth is that they don’t surround us at all.

We surround them.

No, please don’t ask. I have no idea what this means, beyond the revelation that Glenn Beck hears voices in his head, which I kind of already knew. (See here if you are unfamiliar with Mr. Beck, you lucky person you. There’s not much more to learn.) I think it has something to do with the Wizard of Oz sending his flying monkeys out to raise the capital gains tax, but it’s all rather obscure. (Oddly enough, Fox News’ own Shepard Smith couldn’t figure it out either, and actually made fun of it, for which, as Fox News’ own Chris Wallace informed him, he’ll probably be fired.)

But anyhow, yesterday, Friday the Thirteenth, Glenn Beck had some sort of Major Promotional Thing to tell crazy people that there are, indeed, other drooling lunatics in the world, and they sent him their photographs to prove it. Also it’s all tied into September 11, AND September 12, and perhaps the Protocols of the Elders of Asshole.

You know, I totally get why yoking the GOP to Limbaugh makes sense, politically. But the truth is, 21st Century Conservatism is Glenn Beck — and his pal Chuck Norris, famed kickbigot, who says, "tounge n’cheek" (very sic), that he wants to be President of Texas, because treason is always amusing. (And yes, forcible secession is actual treason, as opposed to, say, thinking the war in Iraq was a stupid idea.)

Anyhow the implications of Glenn Beck "surrounding" you are likely to be perceived by most Americans as about as appetizing as detecting Glenn Beck outside your bedroom window wearing a tutu. There is a reason conservatives have been losing elections lately. It’s because conservatives are, on the whole, some pretty creepy-assed motherfuckers.