It’s amazing, when you think of it. You know, it being the new century and 2012 and all. Us being civilized and advanced and whatnot.

Up to now, there’s been things like reaching the moon, the Internet, air flight, the works of Shakespeare and Da Vinci, the Pythagorean Theorem, Beethoven’s Seventh, antibiotics, circumnavigation, civil rights, the Bible and the Qur’an, the Magna Carta, and so on. So many achievements, we humans have had, with more presumably to come. Not bad.

And, then, after all that achievement — after all those things that suggest to you that we’re advancing as a civilization — along come Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin.

Mourdock and Akin are alleged to be human, but you’d actually never know it. In the press, the pair is most often described as U.S. senatorial candidates for Indiana and Missouri, respectively. Being candidates for high office, you’d think they’d be impressive, too.

But they’re not. Mourdock and Akin are scum of the Earth. They are lower than bacteria. If you are in any way human — and, more particularly, if you have had a mother, a sister, a wife or a daughter — that’s how you should feel about Mourdock and Akin, too.

Mourdock, as you may have heard, is Mitt Romney’s boy. The Republican presidential candidate has even recorded a commercial for Mourdock, endorsing him. He stands by Mourdock — even after the Indiana GOP candidate this week said that, if a woman gets raped and pregnant, “that’s something God intended.”

That’s a quote. Mourdock, who resembles a human but isn’t, said that God — with whom he is in regular personal contact, seemingly — “intended” for women to get, you know, raped and pregnant. Romney is resolute. “Governor Romney disagrees with Richard Mourdock,” allowed his spokesman, Andrea Saul. “But (we) still support him.” Got that? Get raped, get pregnant, no less than the Almighty intended for it to happen.

That’s what Messrs. Mourdock and Romney are mooting, in these last few days of the historic U.S. presidential race. Mourdock’s insanity would be just that — one man’s insanity — were it not for the fact that, within the Republican Party, it’s a form of insanity that is contagious.

Back in August, Todd Akin was one of the first U.S. conservatives to share his reflections on rape. Back then, the pride of Missouri Republicans declared that women’s bodies have ways of preventing pregnancy in cases of “legitimate rape.” That, too, is a quote. There’s rapes that aren’t legitimate, and there’s rapes that are. Akin, who was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives when he made his statement, was suggesting that some victims of rape are, you know, lying about their claim. That it was therefore “legitimate” for them to have been raped.

The Taliban didn’t immediately endorse Akin in a Romney-style campaign ad, but they could have. They have similar views about the violation and degradation of women. And, coincidentally enough, they have come out against — and in some cases destroyed — some of the manifestations of human achievement, described above. So, it being 2012 and all, it’s amazing that we have to say this, much less take seriously scum like Akin and Mourdock. But we do. Rape is, of all crimes, one of the foulest. It is hate made flesh. It leaves a woman, as one woman wrote, dying by pieces. If it was done to your wife, or your sister, or your daughter, or your mother, you’d want to kill the bastard with your bare hands, slowly. I know I would.

Mourdock and Akin? They just deserve to lose the designation “ human.” Because they aren’t.