"1,000 Years of Darkness"? Chuck Norris: Portrait of a Tea Party Extremist

In the ideological, political and cultural sense, the Republican party has certainly come a hell of a long way since George H.W Bush first talked about his "1,000 Points of Light" and his idea for a unified society during his inauguration speech on January 20, 1989.

I'm not going to criticize Chuck Norris for expressing his political beliefs; this is America and everyone has the right to their own opinions. When I caught wind that Norris, a well-known former action-film star, had posted a short anti-Obama video on youtube with his wife, I wasn't surprised.

Between Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan's uninspiring appearances at the lackluster GOP convention in Tampa and Bill Clinton's amazing speech during last night's Democratic National Convention - it's clear that the Republicans are desperate to do anything to try and prevent President Obama from winning a second term.

I respect Chuck Norris, before I decided to blog about him I checked out his Wikipedia page and he's given a lot to charitable causes, carved out a career as an action star and is arguably a Hollywood icon in his own way. But he's also an outspoken evangelist Christian activist who believes in creation theory and campaigns for prayer inside public schools; he campaigned for Mike Huckabee in the 2008 Presidential race and endorsed Newt Gingrich during the Republican primaries.

This video is getting a lot of media buzz, but what's really sad is that in the end, Norris gets in front of the camera with his wife and doesn't say anything of substance. He doesn't spend one second talking about a specific issue that he's concerned about, or a policy that he disagrees with.

Instead, Norris clutches his wife's hand and essentially "Eastwoods" his way through the video, rambling earnestly about worn-out Tea Party rhetoric about the horrors of Obama's "socialism". He quotes Edmund Burke and Ronald Reagan, offering up baseless, irrational fear-mongering about the consequences of Obama being reelected leading America into "1,000 years of darkness."

About the only thing Norris manages to do in this laughable online video clip is to demonstrate a remarkable detachment from fact and reality. It's almost as if he's totally retreated into his own strange "John Wayne-like" netherworld where he no longer distinguishes between reality and fantasy; and has come to actually believe he IS the fictional action-hero he played so many times in movies and on television.

Norris' foray into political infomercials is so much more sad and pathetic than Clint Eastwood talking to a chair because he really looks like he means what he's saying. Like if Obama wins the election he and his wife (she's got those "crazy eyes" like Michelle Bachmann) are going to just pack up all their gear and move up into the hills and live "off the grid" in some kind of extravagant bomb shelter compound to ride out the Armaggedon of a presidential administration ruled by fact, reason and a sense that Americans don't have to be ruled by fear, ignorance, division and delusional ideas.

So no, I wasn't surprised by this video at all, in fact, how typical, when Americans need leadership and ideas, right-wing conservatives offer up fear and ignorance. Frankly Norris and his wife look like they're the ones locked into a "1,000 years of darkness." Did Dinesh D'Souza direct it?