And so are we. We have been had beyond our own ability to recognize, still, quite what has been pulled on us: one of the greatest political sleight-of-hand routines in history. This sitting President has lied more, wiped his ass with the Constitution, sneered at the rest of the world, all the while bumbling his way through near-incoherent nonsense about "terror" and some vague "war" and the fact that we are "safer but still not safe." Beg pardon?

What we have REALLY lost in all this is the notion that the government has not done enough to make us safe. While it is true the government has not done intelligent things to improve safety, given all the TERROR it has been fomenting among the populace for the benefit of the TERRORISTS it would have us believe lurk beneath every bed, we have lost track of the meaning of words like "terror", which is an emotion. If this administration were truly waging a "war on terror" it would be doing everything in its power to remind and reassure the American public that there is no need to live in a state of terror, that we have made significant dents in the rather random assortment of trouble-making cells that pass for a "terror network" around the globe, and that the events of 9/11, as terrible as they were, remain an aberration and a statisical fluke of gigantic proportions - assuming they weren't actually engineered by the very administration which makes hay from that terrible event almost non-stop. The President, instead of trying to terrorize the citizenry, would be reminding us of the words (and here I repeat myself, and will, ad nauseum, until I drive this point home) of the late psychoanalytic giant Erich Fromm, who wrote in "The Sane Society" in 1955 (a far more dangerous time than the planet has ever since seen), that "The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity, without panic and undue fear."

Instead, the current administration promotes the emotion of terror among the citizenry, thereby abetting the cause of all terrorists everywhere, and, by doing so, placing himself squarely in the camp of terrorists and the practice of terrorism, not only against foreign enemies both real and imaginary, but against we citizens of a formerly free and rational America! He says "They hate us for our freedom," and then proceeds to relieve us of our freedoms, one by one, in the name of an endless and pointless "war" against the very emotion he has fomented among our number.

This is the biggest lie, the biggest deception and the biggest error on our part, for we have fallen for the faulty wording, thinking and, worst of all, for our own belief that we should never have problems, never be less than totally secure, safe from not only terrorist attacks that could happen at any time in history past, present or future, but from acts of God, the Universe, disease, old age, accident, and our own stupidity.

What we have lost that is most precious is our own courage to be, to live in a world that is inherently dangerous, in a universe that is random and unpredictable, and we are just as guilty of fomenting fear as the evil idiot savant who leads us, by placing such a premium on security instead of liberty. If it were otherwise, we would already have thrown off the pack of power-mad lunatics we have allowed to steal the tiller of the Republic.

Of course, we could just get up off our collective, quaking ass and take it back. Soon.

When we finally get over our own embarassment and throw the bums out, we'll at least have a sound platform for keeping the next crew in line: ridicule. Gimme that ol' time derision!

The cable is even now wrapped around your throat. Push "play" and it will tighten to a degree you could never have imagined (apparently) and as the lights go out the sound you hear will be a battering ram at the door of corporate "entertainment."

I got your "media" right here.

And not a moment too soon. I had hoped against hope that from amidst all the mud-slinging and no-point/no-counterpoint ad hominem bullshit that has passed for political commentary over the past few years, someone with passion, intelligence and, yes, anger - righteous anger - would eventually stand up and point directly at the problem. Olbermann finally started to do it and when it worked, surprise, surprise, everyone fell back in stunned silence first, then began trying to dissect this strange creature who had emerged from the box and continues operate outside it. Is he doing it for the ratings? Who gives a good god damn? He is doing it! He is calling a spade a spade, calling the President a fool, calling O'Reilly's lame and overused bluffs, and it had to work, because the facts always do if honorable men will only speak them.

Why, in the name of all that's good and decent, has no one stepped forward to speak for American instead of its various parts til Obermann? When will we get past the "us and them" mentality that has been so successfully used to divide this utterly remarkable nation? Maybe we have begun.

Give the guy a raise. Let him be whatever he is. But for god's sake listen to him! Sanity has broken out in the least likely place. Give him air!!