I can sense a very budding hope of the change in the country-when one is not afraid to protest the war for fear of being called a traitor; to question the ability of the government to do anything right; to ask questions that haven't been asked before, and getting some answers. To have courage to face the enemy and say, "NO MORE!"

It is called "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore". I think the American people are finally waking up to the fact that what we had voted for in the past has nearly destroyed our country, and we only woke up in time to start putting it back together. It's going to take a lot of hard work and diligence to get it back, but it can be done.

We just can't let it take care of itself-because otherwise nothing will change. We must keep on keeping on until it is over.

For the first time in years I feel really good about being on the right side. I knew back in 2000 this set of circumstances would roll out the way they did..and felt real fear from that time on. Now that fear is beginning to recede very slowly.

Karen M:

It is easy to discount simple words, but you never know when you say or write something that will have an impact on someone else who is one of those on-the-street activists. It is all to the good.

There is also the issue of all the political donations they enabled-- I supported many candidates through FDL's Blue effort, donating online, sitting right at my computer. A bunch of those candidates won, too, and they were liberals I would not have known about without the blogosphere.

Then all we'll have to do is ignore the extremist fringe like we used to when I was a kid, and people will just chuckle when they read the things people like shooter have to say -- -- Armagednoutahere

I agreed wholeheartedly with everything Armagednoutahere said but this last sentence made me pause.

I remember being in graduate school and laughing at the antics of the religious right and Newt Gingrich. A group of us used to get together and watch them as pure comedy. And, yes, we ignored them. We didn’t take them seriously, how could we? They were laughable, ludicrous and loathsome.

And then, (it seemed suddenly) they gained power and weren’t funny at all anymore. I stopped laughing and began to be concerned. In the last few years, I have been frightened of what’s happened to this country.

Not long ago, I remember a friend asking me in total seriousness, “are we going to be alright?” and I had to respond, just as serious, “I don’t know.”

Today, I can say (with a little hesitation and a tad of trepidation) that yes, I think we’re going to be, eventually, alright.

But we should learn from this experience that these authoritarians aren’t going to go away, and someday, like the zombies they are, will rise from their graves once again.

Yes, we can laugh at them, and ridicule them; but we mustn’t ignore them. We need make sure that these anti-democratic tendencies are kept in their place. We will always have a radical authoritarian fringe, but they should never again be allowed to gain such power – over the media, the government, and yes, the public.

We aren’t out of the woods even yet, and there are many lessons to be learned. That is the next step: making sure that the public learns just what was at stake, and how far toward the dark side this country actually ventured. That’s something much of the public still doesn’t realize. And I’m still grasping to understand it completely myself.

Before I get attacked by someone who thinks my speaking of being safe betrays a desire to take no risks in defense of what I believe, let me say that in my last comment, I meant safe in the sense of having confidence that our perceptions will be borne out by events.

Some of our more ardent types have in the past found it hard to believe that I ever leave my couch or my computer chair. T'ain't so, and never was.

Isn't what we're after a return to normal? BushCo has been an aberration. Sure, normal means attack ads and too much money in politics and a conservative Supreme Court for the foreseeable future, an economy too dependent on credit-card debt and foreign oil -- stuff we were dealing with already when Rove stole the election for Bush. We didn't know how good we had it, and we want it back. We'll have it back, too, as long as BushCheneyRove don't do something really catastrophic in their last throes.

feel hope so do our enemies. 9/11 part two is on the way and our enemies will just wait for the appeasers to take control.

Who are 'our enemies', tiberius? Al Qaeda or the Dixie Chicks?

Who are 'the appeasers', tiberius? The ones who had plans in place to deal with Al Qaeda back in 2000, or the ones who ignored those plans in 2001 and can't be bothered to come up with ones that work in 2007?

Then you can all really feel good.

Like you did when 9/11 happened, tiberius?

How many more Americans have to die before you feel 'good' about yourself again, tiberius?

...Glenn, did you listen to the Ira Glass "This American Life" show last night? A repeat of a show from a year ago, a show that won a Peabody, a show that interviewed, two Guantanamo prisoners, and told the whole appalling story of what we've done down there, and what we continue to do. Jack Hitt did a simply remarkable job of making it clear just how cowardly, sleazy and corrupt both the White House, and the Defense Department have been, in initiating a totally illegal detention system, and then desperately trying to cover up the mess when that system went totally off the rails.

It's required hearing. I listened to it last night for the first time, and, I thought "Christ. What we've done at Guantanamo is beyond redemption. And Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Yoo, Addington, Wolfowitz, Rice, and anyone else involved, should be in jail. The articles for impeachement of both President and vice President are right there in Glass's show."

I hope you're right. But if you think the power structure in this country is just going to roll over and play dead..I don't think so. That structure protects its own. I don't see how Bush and Cheney will ever answer for their crimes. But I continue to hope that they do. Glass's show last night could be one more very heavy straw, were it more widely known.