"</spittle>"

Yumm... Sorry my man, but you see, I have spent two successive weekends in a "swing state". I'm feeling a bit bipola...err binary (yes, Ashton, I said it). It's hard not to be (bi)polarized/lobotomized by the constant nattering and carping about nuisances in style that the one party system keeps spitting up every four years or so. That said, the Patriot Act sucks and I might even go along with the rate of acceleration hypothesis you have posed. But this is still a product of the "war on ourselves" that we have become so accustomed to fighting. Remember the "war on drugs" and all the civil liberties that were lost in that one? Remember the war on poverty and the war on cigarettes and the war on obesity and the war on American employees ad infinitum. To me, they are one long "war on Americans civil liberties". Can you believe that in 2004 that a person can still be put in jail for smoking a joint? In 1972 that would have been absurd to me.

And yes, I think I understand the 1972 analogy. Do you know that Nixon actually kissed me on the forehead during a whistlestop tour of Ohio in '68? I was 7 years old and it made the front page of the local newspaper. I thought he was a great man - the president of the United States... kissed me. Of course, we all know the rest of the story. :-O Thinking about it, maybe that was when I lost interest in politicians?

But I digress. Back to the civil liberties thingy. We are a group that is easily trodden upon if our own ox is not being gored at the time we give these freedoms up. Very few of the herd see the interrelationship. What can I say? In many ways I've already given up. Hell, in Indiana I couldn't even write in Adlai Stevenson and have my vote "count"... I feel disenfranchised. It would be different if I honestly felt that electing one of the two ass clowns presented by the majors would make a real difference when it comes to "governance" of this train wreck.

In any event, it's not fair to be assigning motive to you, not knowing you personally. I really hope that I truly have just fallen into a cynical abyss from which I can no longer see hope that is actually springing eternal. Blah, blah blah... I just can't force myself.