Apparently, the whole world is falling apart right before our eyes. Or possibly it’s behind our backs. Always hard to tell with human beings. Just ask any cat.

(But don’t ask my cat unless you can speak French. She’s finicky about English.)

So let’s see:

• ISIS (or ISIL or the Islamic State, depending on which name of the week the members are using now) is running amok in Iraq and Syria, or was running amok, etc., and poses a threat to the whole world, but President Obama is going to take care of that just as soon as he puts together a coalition of the willing. Which is a phrase we’ve never heard before.

• So naturally, former Stealth President Dick Cheney wants to go to war pretty much everywhere. You got a troubling hot spot, Cheney wants to bomb it. Maybe put boots on the ground, too. None of this wimpy diplomacy stuff. What is it with these guys who got deferments during the Vietnam War that they think it’s really keen to go to war now?

Cheney got 20 or 30 deferments during the Vietnam War because, as he has said, he had better things to do. Well, OK, I exaggerate — he didn’t get 20 or 30, but he got enough. His running mate, the former Cowboy in Chief, jumped to the head of the line and was allowed to join the Texas Air National Guard. He never flew anywhere near Vietnam.

• Ebola. Just the word gives us some white-knuckle time. Ebola is raging through West Africa, from what I can tell from various news reports, and it might come here. Well, if it morphs into an airborne virus, as opposed to its current state as a contact-with-human-body-fluids sort of virus. What should we do? Besides have white knuckles. Well, Dick Cheney would probably say, Bomb West Africa and send that virus back to the Stone Age.

Hmm. Do you think that virus was around in the Stone Age? Me, too.

• And the Boston Red Sox. They are going to be, I believe, the first MLB team to go from last to World Series champions to last again. That’s almost Ozymandias-worthy. “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair,” or something like that. My Internet has decided to go sleep with the cat. I hope it can speak French.

• And here in Iowa, we have Joni Ernst, the Republican candidate for Senate. No, really.

Well, OK, Ernst isn’t quite on the level of Ebola or war. Yet.

That was a joke, by the way. But if Ernst moves any further to the right, she’ll be living with Attila the Hun. They can castrate pigs together.

For instance, Ernst says in her ads she doesn’t see any evidence of global climate change. (In a quite breathy voice, for whatever reason — is that supposed to be sexy or something? It’s about as sexy as a mud slide.)

Ernst also, according to many, many reports, would like to ban abortion. And, just for good measure, some forms of birth control. She would also like to ban same-sex marriage, by a federal constitutional amendment, if necessary. (Although she also believes same-sex marriage is a state issue; a federal constitutional amendment is not a state issue, obviously.)

Ernst wants to privatize Social Security (how would that work out in a stock-market crash?), looks favorably on impeaching Obama (something about Obama’s executive orders, conveniently overlooking George W. Bush’s far more extensive use of such orders), and, according to reports, believes Saddam did have a secret cache of WMD.

Yeah, the world is going to hell in a hand basket. At least it’s handy.