Hmmmm, maybe he already has!

If you don't like TT, then take a hike.

If you can draw a better strip, then do it.

If you don't like sand in your vagina, Brad, don't sit on the beach.

If you don't like TT, then get a phone card and call somebody who gives a shit.

I regret that I was so much in agreement with your assessment of American decline that I could have written it myself, word for word. But you're not getting out of here so easy.

It's nice daydream, moving to Chile. Have you been there? I have. There is a thin veneer of democracy and freedom there too, just like here. At present, it looks like paradise. Tomorrow?

¿Quién sabe?

Argentina? You're joking, right? I mean, you gotta be joking!

I've lived and worked in a lot of countries over the course of my erratic and misspent life. But I'm back here. Every time I thought of settling down somewhere else, I'd think of what I'd be giving up.

America is my country. It's in a state of decline, it's true. I feel, as you do, that we are headed for a very bad turn here. I won't live to see it, but I fear that if things don't change, a generation just ahead is going to have to take this country back by armed force. I believe that there will be a bloody revolution here within the next fifty years. I'm grateful I won't be around when it happens.

You might find temporary shelter in some other place, if you decide to bug out. But you won't be at peace. You will live out your life always an immigrant, an "estranjero." You may float above the class systems and poverty of your new country with the luxury that comes from having your income from an outside source. But you can't be a true citizen as a "pensionado." If you immigrate, you'll be in the same boat as the locals, with all their troubles. And having expressed yourself the way you did, you'd be a hypocrite if you didn't give up your American passport. I have a feeling that for all your bluster, you'd chicken out.

Think about the day when you denounce your alligence to this land, and vow to fight to the death for your new country. Or may you fancy the idea that you are just a citizen of the planet and you will just pull up stakes when ever the going gets tough and move to somewhere more pleasant. There is no culture on earth where you would be considered anything other than a contemptable drifter.

Stay and fight. This country is worth saving. Our ideals, though strained, are still worth it.

Although other people like to wrap themselves in it, that's my flag flying. This is my home. There are some things worth fighting and dying for. I still believe that although I am the world's greatest cynic.

Happy Forth of July. Remember what it really means.

Petroleum. Who has got it. Who doesn't have it. Who is desperate for it. That's the game.

Very dramatic, the photo of the disinterred skeleton with the blindfold.

But as symbols go, a better photo would be of the construction in Iraq of the largest and most heavily fortified U.S. embassy complex ever built.

Long-term thinkers don't care one way or the other who runs Iraq as long as that vital strategic energy resource stays under the control of United States interests.

The United States is desperate. Either they have their hand on the spiggot of the global economy, or somebody else does.

That's the game afoot. The stakes are so high that the U.S. can't afford to let go of that oil. Everything else is just sentimental nonsense. The Iraqi people may as well be jack rabbits.

Keep writing. You are articulate. Throughout history, powerful people fear writers more than bullets. That's where you can do some good. Meanwhile, I think you need a vacation.

Soon it will be springtime in Viña del Mar and the orchards above town will bloom, sending waves of intoxicating perfume down to the beaches. The European snowbirds will arrive, a fair number of them young shop girls from Stockholm and Berlin in thong bikinis. Who knows, there's always a chance you might get lucky.

In any case, it will take your mind off suicide and revolution for a while and this nasty old world will still be waiting when you get back. Take a break.

But after seeing him on TV this morning I can only say that if he wants to start killing people, he should start with his barber.

I believe it was something like, "if anybody in my administration had anything to do with this, they won't be workin' here any more."