COMMENTATOR Christopher Hitchens has taken to calling California "Absurdistan" given the fissure running through the collective common sense of that state's population, one every bit as pronounced ? and as potentially destructive ? as the San Andreas Fault.

The functioning of the seventh largest economy in the world (as the flacks in Sacramento are always wont to boast) is routinely disrupted by the disorienting antics of a media-savvy coalition of maladjusted refugees from New Age encounter groups.

Comprising roughly equal parts overnight multi-millionaires from Silicon Valley (the couple who enjoy the dubious distinction of having created the Flying Toaster computer screen saver invested their fortune in various online agitprop resources aimed directly at undermining the same free market system that enriched them); vacuous Hollywood stars and starlets who believe their tinsel celebrity is sufficient qualification to make them political king-makers and king-breakers; and assorted UFO cultists, Transcendental Meditation adherents and at-large former members of the Manson Family. This crazy quilt partnership of leftward-leaning citizen activists regularly uses its money and influence in attempts to hijack the state's agenda.

When former body builder and B-movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger emerges as the stentorian voice of reason in a political environment characterised by screwballs so very unhinged Preston Sturges could never have conceived of them, it's acutely telling.

The blanket tolerance of otherwise reasonable and diligent Californians for the irrational among them who are in constant pursuit of the unattainable has also led to the state being dubbed "The Left Coast" by those who share Hitchens' mordant view of its political affairs.

But while California regularly allows its legislative agenda to be unduly influenced by the extremists (a situation that would be akin in terms of GNP and population size to, say, Jim Carrey, Dan Aykroyd and Pamela Anderson dictating Canadian social policies), the political lunatics have not yet taken over the state house or the Governor's mansion.

It's an entirely different story in Bermuda.

What might Hitchens be tempted to rechristen this island, where wholesale resignation and lassitude in the face of political insanity is both systemic and systematic. "Bemuseda"? "The Somnolence Isles"? Perhaps "The Isles of Silly".

Any of the above would do.

Bermuda now eclipses even "Absurdistan" in terms of giving free rein to political dilettantes intent on subordinating the public good to frequently unhinged private agendas.

Here, though, it's not even as if the prevailing political lunacy were grounded in some kind of misguided, ego- or money-driven idealism. Rather, it's the unethical in hot pursuit of the indefensible.

With the looting of public funds decriminalised by Police, Cabinet's collective shrug-of-the-shoulders indifference for accountability and enough vendettas being pursued within the ranks of the ruling Progressive Labour Party to qualify this internal fighting as a bloodless version of Balkans-type tribal warfare, Bermuda is now clearly running on momentum alone. There is no direction for the island currently being charted; no overriding strategic objectives in terms of policy are being pursued for the simple reason none have even been identified.

One of the most dynamic and consistently successful micro-economies in the world is adrift as corruption becomes entrenched, an epidemic of administrative sleeping sickness scythes through portfolios as diverse as health care, education and public housing and shadowy attempts by Parliamentarians to bring about a final resolution to the unfinished business of last July's coup continue unabated.

The current Premier, a past grandmaster at simultaneously dividing and distracting Bermudians, has finally found his ability to redirect the public's attention failing him.

The back-to-back crises at the Bermuda Housing Corporation and the Berkeley Institute construction site, a seemingly bottomless money pit for squandered tax dollars, are on scales so vast that even his proven ability to obscure the reality through misdirection has been overwhelmed. Berkeley cost overruns are now estimated to exceed $90 million and the final bill is likely to be many millions of dollars higher still. No one can semi-accurately guesstimate when the project will actually be completed. The BHC, according to the Director of Public Prosecutions, was the scene of a culture of corruption unprecedented in the Bermudian public sector, an environment where the plundering of public funds could and did take place pell-mell.

Damage control in the BHC scandal amounted to a series of bromides delivered by a Premier wearing a sickly Cheshire Cat smirk for the occasion, a half-moon leer that remained hanging in the air even as his credibility abruptly vanished around him. In the case of Berkeley, a neophyte Cabinet Minister was summarily thrown to a pack of ravenous wolves comprising the Press, disaffected workers and an increasingly outraged public.

Ashfield DeVent confronted unionised demonstrators who descended on the Cabinet Office last Friday, the Premier remained inside surveying the ugly scene through lace curtains. Hardly an auspicious exercise in take-charge leadership for a labour Premier. So far those controlling the Pro-Active spin cycle, remarkable as it may seem given the company's history of blas? disdain for deadlines and budgets, have prevailed in the public relations war following on from the termination of their contract.

The Premier has presided over the outsourcing of his Government's integrity to limbo. He shoulders total responsibility for current tensions in Bermuda's relations with the US and UK given his imprudent Cuban out-reach and contrived attempts to leapfrog Independence to the top of the public agenda by stage-managing a confrontation with Whitehall over the appointment of a new Chief Justice.

In other jurisdictions, Alexander the So-So may well have been compelled to resign by this point given the chain reaction of ineptitude he initiated is rapidly approaching some kind of critical mass. But given the unique set of circumstances that brought him to office following last year's palace coup, his position remains relatively assured. For now.

Despite poll numbers plummeting earthwards every bit as fast as a lead-peppered pheasant on the first day of the shooting season, within a riven PLP the Premier is generally viewed as the slightly lesser of two evils. His rival and likely successor, Dr. Ewart Brown, while far more popular than the incumbent Premier among Parliamentarians is still viewed with trepidation by the PLP's grassroots network of branches. Many still see him as the Brutus in last July's Parliamentary plot to unseat Jennifer Smith and his actions in orchestrating that coup have yet to be forgotten, let alone forgiven.

Dr. Brown's rationalisation for his actions during the post-election rebellion actually managed to trump the Burch Doctrine of political arrogance. The former Premier's right-hand man famously declared Cabinet did not care what "you" people think about its sometimes unsalubrious activities ? as curt a dismissal of responsibility and accountability as had ever emanated from the mouth of a Bermudian politician up to that point.

apologists, of course, attempted to instantly rehabilitate David Burch by arguing he was talking about anti-PLP elements generally, the United Bermuda Party in particular. Dr. Brown went Colonel Burch one better when he all but declared he did not care what thought. Explaining he and his supporters within the Parliamentary caucus had to "mislead" both PLP voters and the electorate in general even while Jennifer Smith's exit strategy ? unbeknownst to her ? was being planned, Dr. Browne all but conceded he placed a higher premium on winning re-election by any expediency than he did on veracity or reliability. The inference that this Man Who Would Be Premier leads a power-hungry cabal more focused on self-advancement than public service is a difficult one to avoid.

The Balkanisation within the PLP ? the face-off between the Brown faction and the Scott/Smith wing ? has continued unabated for the last year, with catastrophic recent events clearly providing momentum to the rebel faction's take-over plans.

So the electorate is currently witnessing what amounts to a political version of , with all of the stock elements of a low-rent Jacobean revenge tragedy ? court intrigues, scheming, treachery ? coming into play in a semi-tropical setting.

Who will emerge as the winner in the ongoing power struggle between PLP elements still loyal to the Premier and his putative successor Dr. Ewart Brown is anyone's guess. But make no mistake about it: what's taking place now is a political survival game, a trial of endurance between two contenders for leadership, rather than anything remotely resembling good governance for the led.

The time has probably come for Dr. Brown to authorise the removal of the "Welcome to Bermuda" signs at the airport. This island is now the easternmost province of Absurdistan.