"The America We Remember"

Bush-Haters seem to think that, ever since the inauguration of George "I Cannot Tell A Lie" Washington, we have been smoothly cruising down the 200-year-long-plus highway of democracy and just ho-humming and enjoying the ride...

... until, that is, the year 2000, when, out of the blue, we were pulled over by the Supreme Court and assigned a new driver who no one wanted (except for those 50,456,002 American citizens from up and down the socio-economic ladder, from every state, both young and old, of both genders, all races, diverse ethnicities and creeds, and with wide-ranging educational backgrounds), and who even had a DWI on his record!

But we were told to kick back, relax, drink our 7-11 Slurpees, play hand-held video games, or count the cows we passed as we continued on our Great American Journey, and many of us did, with the exception of several disgruntled blue-staters who sat sullenly and pouted with arms folded, or incessantly whined:

"Are we there yet?... Do you know where you're going?...I want the old driver back! Slow down, you're driving too fast...!"

America is a country that doesn't know where it's going but is determined to set a speed record getting there.

Lawrence J. Peter

Then, suddenly, the new driver, Dubya-- following cryptic directions from some mysterious voice in his ear-phone-- inexplicably lurched and wildly cranked the wheel and took a sharp right, smashing through a road block, and bumpily steering onto an offroad of imperial fascism; a jostling road which is full of rocks, potholes, roadkill, and runs off a cliff at the end!

Needless to say, fasten your seatbelts, people!

So, essentially, the Bush-haters are simply pointing out that Dubya is not only a bad driver, but a dangerous one, and they are pleading for us to take back the wheel, turn the car around, and get back on the highway, the freeway they "remember," and they wax sentimentally about the vision and noble character of the asphalt-laying Founding Fathers as a contrast to the villains at the wheel today:

The Constitution is being trampled! The Founding Fathers are rolling around in their graves!

The Bush-Haters

Sure, I know who they're talking about: the Bible-thumping, debt-ridden, slandering, slaveholding, murderously-duelling, Native American-hating, and probably wife-beating drunkards to boot (not to mention traitors to the Crown).

Hey, don't get me wrong. I love those revolutionary scoundrels and properly revere them. I'm serious. And they were certainly men of high intellect:

Europe was created by history. America by philosophy.

Margaret Thatcher

But really now. It was hardly a Golden Age of Plato's Philosopher-Kings.

Jefferson's vice president Aaron Burr shot to death ten-dollar bill Alexander Hamilton, the nation's first treasurer from Washington's administration, in a duel because of what Hamilton was saying to the papers about him. Washington was called all sorts of things, including a war criminal, a "country bumpkin" and "King George" (two out of three arguably warranted), and the rabble-hating Adams was labeled a "monarchist" and "insane" so often I would suspect he lamented the etiquette the Englishman (NOT the Frenchman) bestowed upon royals, and had a nervous breakdown or three. And we know about Jefferson: a slave-owner and perpetually-indebted spendthrift who shocked Constitutional sensibilities by his Louisiana Purchase that expanded the young nation's girth largely enough to make any imperialist proud.

Interestingly, that "Let's take America back" shtick is precisely the substance of Kevin Costner's heroic rendition of Prosecutor Jim Garrison's closing argument in Oliver Stone's JFK, when he teared up and pleaded to the jury to help him "take back" the "America he was born in," the America he "remembers," before the Republican/Military/fascists forces took the wheel (after killing the original and desired driver, the King of Camelot, JFK).

Coincidence? I think not. The mind-set of many of the Bush-Hating liberals at the vanguard came out of that putrid cultural petri dish known as "The Sixties" and had that anti-establishment silliness revitalized when Stone came of age and began churning out his conspiracy-laden propaganda against that conservative establishment (strongly implying, for example, that the military-industrial complex--associated with war-mongering Republicans--had a hand in killing Democrat JFK because the latter wanted to end the Vietnam War--which he started! For good measure, Stone then gave Republican Tricky Dick Nixon the Anthony Hopkins/Hannibal Lecter treatment).

Don't believe me? Run down to Blockbuster's and catch Costner's/Garrison's closing argument in JFK. It is almost as if the Bush-Haters lifted the lines verbatim when harping about corporatism, deceit in government, the sinister power of the military industrial complex, fascists, and the behind-the-scenes puppet-masters (who, I guess, are somehow connected to the KGB, CIA, Cuban, and mafioso assassins that were crowded on the grassy knoll that day in Dallas, along with--what the hell, why not?-- an insanely jealous Joe Dimaggio).

Above all, note Garrison's tearful plea to the jury to "take back" the America he "remembers."

Sorry, folks. Stone was just flashbacking and skillfully putting to film his paranoid acid trips.

Let's have a reality check:

As to the notion that the year 2000 marked the end of some idyllic America that Stone/Bush-Haters "remember" and want to "take back," I don't know what "America" they're talking about, and I don't think any of you can tell me, either.

First of all, if you take Occam's razor and sheer away much of the loud carping on the state of the union that is created by a big-mouthed, gossipy, partisan, and alarmist media--from both ends of the political spectrum, to be sure-- that is more ubiquitous today than ever before in print, on the air, cable, and the Internet, I would think that any reasonable person would prefer the standard of living, communication capabilities, the instant fingertip access to vast amounts of information, and freedom of thought, behavior, and mobility that we enjoy today than what could possibly have been offered at any other time in, not only American history, but human history, not to mention the graceful and cooperative attitude we have all developed for our neighbors and even strangers of both genders and all ages, creeds, races, ethnic and educational backgrounds, socio-economic status, and even sexual orientation, a cultural zeitgeist which embraces diversity but appears to be taken for granted by SOME people who see an alarming decline in all of those things with Curious George the monkey who's not curious about anything (at best) or the Son of Satan (at worst) living in the White House.

Bush-Haters would have to agree to all that good stuff, but in so doing would have to concentrate that much tighter a lazer of hate on the "anamolous" Bush Administration to justify the angst at a time of decent living for the average American-- decent in RELATION to what the average American had to deal with for the past two hundred plus years, including, but not limited to:

Franco-American relations deteriorating to the brink of war but defused by #2 John Adams when the country was in its infancy stages (and this not long after they helped us win the Revolution)... Another war against England in 1812 that resulted in a march on Washington and the looting and burning down of the White House... A turf-taking war with Mexico after that (remember the Alamo?)... Imperial designs and expansionism that would make a modern-day Neocon blush, beginning with #3 Tom Jefferson's Louisana Purchase (which doubled the size of the young nation) and still going strong with #11 Polk's annexation of Texas and California (which was the largest amount of Real Estate acquired by any single administration) in a pursuit of a "Manifest Destiny" that commited genocide against Native American nations not seen since the Israelite Joshua exterminated the indiginous Canaanites from the Promised Land... The enslavement of imported Africans concurrent throughout and leading to a national schizm and Civil War that is to Red State/Blue State hysteria over "DIVISIVENESS!" what Dred Scott is to Elian Gonzales immediately followed by the assassination of #16 Abe Lincoln, and then the Impeachment of #17 Andrew Johnson, and a carpet-bagging Reconstruction Period that made the efforts of Halliburton in Iraq look like the Salvation Army's...The rise of the Ku Klux Klan... The Gilded Age and the rise of a corporatism that certainly compromised the entire Federal Government to a degree that would positively make today's allegations of corporate infiltration and malfeasance a model of ethical and productive cooperation...Another assassination (#20 James Garfield)...A war with Spain that was initiated under dubious circumstances (remember the Maine?) and imperial designs for Cuba (remember TR and the Rough Riders?) finishing off the Nineteenth Century and beginning the 20th with the assassination of #25 William McKinley, and the debut of Neocon Patron Saint #25 TR...The poison-gassed trenches of WWI and the abortion of the newly-conceived UN prototype League of Nations...The Woman's Suffrage Movement (did I mention that all this time woman were not allowed to vote?)...Terrorist mob warfare in American cities. ..The Great Depression...Pearl Harbor and WWII and the dropping of two atomic bombs on civilian cities in Japan...The Cold War breeding the Korean War and the policy of M.A.D. (Mutually-Assurred Destruction, which, for decades, didn't do the drang-level of the national psyche any favors)...Communist infiltration in the federal government and reactionary McCarthysm... The lynching of African-Americans in the South and race riots in the North...the ascension of charismatic pretty-boy #35 JFK, and his encouraging of Soviet Cold War enemy Kruschev to deem him a lightweight and so slide a bishop to Cuba and put us in the Missiles in October check in the chess game of the Cold War...the sacrificing of a knight and a pawn to get out of that check...the assassination of JFK, RFK, and MLK..the Vietnam War, Kent State, Yoko Ono breaking up the Beatles, Jim Morrison in Miami, the Rolling Stones in Altamont, Charles Manson and his family, Janice Joplin, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison dying of substance abuse...Watergate, presidential resignation of #38 Tricky Dick..Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford on SNL...the booby-prize #39 Jimmy Carter..Polyester leisure suits...the "American Malaise" and hostages in Iran... #41 Bush's Operation Desert Storm and the eviction of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait..."The New World Order"..."Read My Lips" tax hikes and a recession...race riots in L.A... the consequential electoral rejection of the Distinguished Flying Cross WWII veteran for a draft-dodging unrepetant rapist from Hotsprings, Arkansas, which necessarily lead to the military debacles in Haiti and Somalia, Travelgate, Filegate, Whitewatergate, the first World Trade Center Bombing (when it was hit low), Vince Foster blowing his brains out, Ron Brown dying in a plane crash, the torching of the Branch Davidian cult, the suicide pact of the Heaven's Gate cult, the Oklahoma City bombing, Orenthal Simpson going Othello on Nicole and Ron, Susan Smith going Medea on her two kids, Kurt "No I don't have a gun" Cobain blowing his brains out, Lorena Bobbit performing a penectomy on her marine husband with a kitchen knife, the re-attachment and his return as a functional porn star reminiscent of Frankenstein, a comet smashing into Jupiter, a federal government shutdown, Coffeegate, Chinagate, Columbine, Olympic bombings, Paula Jones, Monicagate, the "irrational exuberance" of the dot-com craze while sovereign American embassies in Africa were bombed, the gratuitous bombings of Kosovo and Iraq, a second U.S. Impeachment, a paternity suit by Arkansas prostitute Vivian Ward, the revelation of the brutal rape of Juanita Broadrick, the guided missile destroyer U.S.S. Cole being blindsided, Y2K hysteria, and Al Gore too while Bin Laden hatched the plot for 9/11.

Gee, that was "fun."

Now tell me, Bush-Haters, which part of American history do you lament and want to "take back"?

Did I leave something out?

Oh yeah:

Between #39 Jimmy Carter's "American Malaise" and #41 Bushs "Read My Lips" tax hikes were the eight years of #40 Reagan, which played the end-game of the Cold War, the 20th Century, and the Second Millenium to boot as memorably as Joe Gibb's Redskins played football as American culture aggressively progressed in all fields, from IT to New Wave music.

The tenure of #34 Ike Eisenhower wasn't too bad at all, either (who presided over a time when America emerged as the preeminent, post-War world power during Richie and Fonzie's "Happy Days").

Ah, Republicans.

Okay, that's my subjective opinion (and no one has to respect it). To you, it could seem that Reagan was no prize and that we would have been better off with a second Carter term, or Mondale/Ferraro's election in 1984 (to which I would say that's it's a good thing I like vodka).

And Ike was a Republican, so forget him.

But that just begs the question again:

WHAT "America" is being wistfully referred to?

For all of you still muttering that Bush's legitimacy was made dubious by the election of 2000 and believe that set the country off on the wrong path by its "UNPRECEDENTED!" nature, then I will convince you that electoral irregularites have occurred throughout American history with...well, regularity:

President #2 John Adams--a Federalist-- had to deal with the sudden appearance of a two-party system which was...(gasp!) UNPRECEDENTED! He then discovered that his rival from the other party, Democratic-Republican rival T. Jefferson, would be the Vice President (In those days, the veep was the presidential contestant who came in second. Adams himself became Washington's veep after winning a plurality of only 34 out of 69 electoral votes, and a majority of three, thanks to Hamilton's balloting, which initiated an ugly feud).

President #6 John Quincy Adams--Democratic-Republican-- lost both the popular AND the electoral vote to Andrew Jackson, but because neither won a majority, the winner was decided by Congress, which was...(gasp!) UNPRECEDENTED!

Now, you tell me which branch of the government is more likely to be corrupted by partisanship and less likely to be scrupulously attentive to the Constitution: Congress, or the Supreme Court?

Right. Congress.

Jackson dogged Q. Adams throughout his only term, calling him a monarchist like his daddy and blocking everything he tried to do (though Quincy managed to establish the Smithsonian Institution and open the Erie Canal). Jackson took him out in the next round (something Gore fantasized of doing to Dubya).

President #10 John Tyler--Whig-- was the first veep to step in as president because of the death of the previous one. The young Democratic Republic suddenly found itself being presided over by someone who was not duly elected, which was...UNPRECEDENTED!

He was called, far and wide, "His Accidency." When he vetoed his party's National Bank bills, his entire cabinet, save one, RESIGNED, AND HE WAS EXPELLED FROM HIS OWN PARTY!

Bush-Haters gloated about the resignation of some of Bush's cabinet after the last election, as if that was confirmation of what a freakishly disfunctional presidency Bush has in comparison to some pre-conceived notion of precedented Executive harmony.

NONSENSE! That was nothing!

Tyler then went on to serve in the Confederate Senate.

Yes, a President of the United States of America became a Confederate Senator.

President #16 Abraham Lincoln-- 1st Republican-- faced an unprecedented situation before he was even inaugurated. One month after the election, South Carolina was so angry, it seceded. One month before he was inaugurated, the Confederate States of America audaciously declared themselves (like this: "Ah do declay-ah!"). One month after he was inaugurated, Fort Sumter was fired upon, beginning the Civil War that would kill 600,000 Americans.

Now THAT'S what you call a "divisive president." I mean, how much more divisive can one president's election get?

He was hated by all caucasians in the south and many in the north. He was called an "ape" (Bush, incidentally, is also called a "monkey"). He was roundly called a tyrant (which was John Wilkes Booth's voiced justification for assassination when he shouted: "Sic semper tyrranus!" after landing on the stage in medias res of the performance of My American Cousin).

Lincoln now shares the top spot in the presidential affections of Americans with the Father of our Country himself, George W...ashington.

President #17 Andrew Johnson--National Union Party--was a pro-Union southerner and Lincoln's veep who also came in unelected at the UNPRECEDENTED assassination of an American president--by a southern sympathizer (Booth).

Johnson had it rough. He got Impeached (but was acquitted), which was, yes, unprecedented (incidentally, the proceedings for Johnson's trial had the dust brushed off them and referenced for another southerner's Impeachment trial, the second in the country's history).

President #19, Rutherford B. Hayes--Republican--lost the popular vote to Sam Tilden, with the electoral votes of four states in dispute. A special commission--with a Republican majority--awarded them to Hayes. He was referred to, far and wide, as "His Fraudulency." He voluntarily did not seek a second term, but left office with the nation prosperous and at peace after his watch.

President #23 Benjamin Harrison--Republican--also won the electoral contest but lost the popular vote. There was nothing to it. He simply won the popular vote by small margins in states that carried heavy electoral clout and lost by bigger popular margins in states with light ones (Rove's/Bush's strategy in both elections was the inverse of that).

President #26 Teddy Roosevelt--Republican-- promised he only wanted two terms and then essentially passed the presidency to his veep--and friend--Big Howard Taft. Then--missing being president-- he turned on Taft and criticized him relentlessly and even formed a third party--The Bull-Moose Party--to run against him. He was so abusive that the gentle-hearted Taft broke down and wept. The splitting of the ticket helped Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win (and, incidentally, seems to have been similarly repeated with former Republican Ross Perot forming the Reform Party and splitting the already fractured conservative/Republican base and helping Democrat Bill Clinton to win).

Allegedly, arguably and apparently, President # 35 John F. Kennedy--Democrat--stole the election from Tricky Dick Nixon by vote fraud in Chicago and Texas, predominantly orchestrated by his millionaire, boot-legging, stock-market manipulating, womanizing, pro-Nazi dad, Joe Sr. (and it is astonishing that many of the same folks who project some of those circumstances and character traits onto Bush 41 & 43 to one degree or another are hard-core Kennedy Dynasty devotees).

I'll stop there, 40 years ago.

So come on. Tell me. Which president and which part of American history do you Bush-Haters keep referencing to "take back" and are lamenting? At which time during the country's evolution do you think we--as a nation--had the right values, applied here and abroad? Which President do you think succeeded in meeting your criteria for presidential character and presided over a time you would identify as the "real" America, an America for "The People" and by "The People," an America you--and Stone/Costner/Garrison--"remember" as an American, political utopia that we should fight to "take back?"

"Uhhhhh.."

Let me help you:

Perhaps you--and Stone/Costner/Gallery-- "remember" the administration of #5 James Monroe, Democratic-Republican, 1817-1825.

Monroe can be characterized as a faithful and competent man who benefitted from the company of men more brilliant than he (sound familiar?), assembling perhaps the best cabinet any president before or since ever has, according to a good number of historians. He was the last president to have been among the Founding Fathers, and the last of the Virginia Dynasty that was composed of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison (he was also the last president to wear knee britches and a powdered wig, as was the fashion in his youth, but was quickly becoming passe as the nation progressed into the nineteenth century).

In that youth, as a teenager, he crossed the Delaware with General Washington as a fighting soldier in the Revolutionary War (he is standing behind Washington and holding the flag in the famous 1851 oil-on-canvas painting by Emanuel Leutzeand titled Washington Crossing the Delaware) and was severely wounded in combat that Christmas Eve raid of the Hessian camp, needing two months to recover his strength.

He returned to the fight and spent the next winter with Washington at Valley Forge

He studied law under Tom Jefferson. He ushered in "The Era of Good Feeling" when he toured the rival Federalist New England states, and united a country that had been marked with rancorous North & South, Federalist & Democratic-Republican partisanship since #2 John Adams, nearly a quarter of a century before. Even his prickly successor, John Quincy Adams, who was very stingy with praise, wrote that the Monroe years would "be looked back to as the golden age of this republic."

In 1817, the Rush-Bagot Agreement established the 49th Parallel as the boundary between the United States and Canada, as in existence today.

In 1821, Monroe acquired Florida from Spain.

He is most famous for his declaration of what is now known as The Monroe Doctrine, which asserts that the United States would oppose any foreign interference in North and South America (basically warning: "This land, from sea to shining sea, is OURS").

The Monroe Doctrine remains a keystone of U.S. policy today. However, it has, gradually-- over the centuries as the world slowly evolved and recently accelerated towards globalization-- since been interpreted to also extend to foreign interference on American interests abroad, justifying imperial urges:

If the American nation will speak softly and yet build and keep at a pitch of a highest training a thoroughly efficient navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far.

Theodore Roosevelt

Yup. All the way to the Phillipines, right Ted?

But overall, yes, indeed, Monroe's Era of Good Feeling was an unprecedented and since very rare occurence of overall national pride, unity, progress, and expansion, as presided over by the last president to have the credentials and character of the Founding Fathers (the last of which, Madison, was to die in Monroe's first year in office).

So, yes, I suppose I can sympathize with sentimental Bush-Hater's yearning for those eight years of national harmony and growth that Monroe presided over, BUT...

...I'm not too sure what the "Take America Back" crowd would think of the fact that Florida was acquired on the heels of the Seminole War, which was largely fought by terrorist, Native American insurgents who just wanted the invasive Anglos to go away, and who were SLAUGHTERED WHOLESALE by Indian-hating psycho-war-machine Andrew Jackson (the first Democrat), who was given carte blanche by Monroe to do whatever it took to get Florida while Monroe himself played stupid and explained to the outraged English and Spaniards that Jackson was a loose cannon who couldn't be controlled (i.e. he lied).

And I'm pretty sure they would be griping about the fact that much of "The Era of Good Feeling" was enabled by the placebo of the Missouri Compromise, which allowed the slave-state of Missouri to join the Union if the free state of Maine could, allaying North-South tensions, but only delaying the inevitable.

So the Native Americans were already on the road to extermination by genocide, we were claim-jumping territories the way Halliburton claim-jumps oil-wells (supposedly, whatever), the slaves wouldn't be emancipated for over four decades, and women still wouldn't be participating in the democratic process for another century.

So no, I guess Bush-Haters aren't "pleading" to take back those days, either.

Operation Iraqi Freedom and it's pre-emptive nature is a mission that is viciously criticised by "patriotic" Bush-Haters as something very un-American, as being against the traditional values which made this country great (like abortions, same sex-marriages, euthanasia, higher taxes, and theophobic secularism, I guess).

It has been presumed that the Founding Fathers, in all their enlightened wisdom, would have blanched at the very idea of going overseas and attacking Iraq.

Most certainly. But only because back then, the vast oceans made it too time-consuming and impractical for the young nation to contemplate imperial designs on The Continent, and it was still trying to make it on its own independently of its English nursemaid (though English and French tutors were imported and still about), and prudently shunned involvement as best they could from the political and social upheavals roiling the Europe the fathers of the Fathers fled. Hence:

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

John Quincy Adams

But that does not mean that they lacked territorial ambitions/avarice or did not take pre-emptive security measures against hostile foreigners/natives.

They had enough room for expansion in the North American wilderness to keep busy for awhile, and keep busy they did.

We were invading Native American land--and violating our own resolutions and signed treaties--from the beginning. Originally, anything outside of the original 13 colonies was NOT OURS by some imperial default, and the vast land was NOT totally uninhabited wilderness; we took what we did from English, French, and Spanish forts and colonies by hook, crook, and cannon, and commited a long campaign of genocide against the indiginous Native Americans who had organized nations and societal structures.

Indeed, what did the Europhobic Quincy Adams own father say?

I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.

John Adams

Yup. Shore sounds like a neocon ta me, pa.

In all of those efforts, in those days, in that Nineteenth Century, mobilizing an army from the Eastern Seaboard and down to Florida or through the midwest and down to Texas and out to California took a significantly greater time commitment and investment of human resources and capital than a lightning-deployment to Iraq is today, the point there being that the thought of traveling great distances to a land populated by others for the purpose of seizure is older than baseball, and the greater effort invested to do so, back then, shows that they were would hardly have been apalled at the thought of such ventures, and, indeed, proved ready, willing, and able

to undertake them.

How do you think we got here?

America's one of the finest countries anyone ever stole.

Bobcat Goldthwaite

Every nation, throughout history, has struggled and warred against its neighbors over resources or for the spread of ideas in the race of man, but we are exceptional, as a nation, as a people, in the cultivation of our conscience and in our capacity for--yes-- compassion. We're benevolent. If we weren't, South America and Canada would've added more constellations of stars to our flag long ago.

At worst, we're well-intentioned but clumsy:

America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.

Oscar Wilde

America is like a big playful puppy with sharp teeth.

Bill Maher (failing to credit Wilde)

At best:

There is nothing wrong with America that the faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

So don't worry. The Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution are both intact and well preserved down at the National Archives. If anyone messes with them, alarms go off, a trap door opens, you slide down a chute, and find yourself in the undisclosed location of Vice President Cheney, who then hands you an all-expense paid one-way ticket to Guantamo Bay for tampering with such a national treasure (only a terrorist would do that, you see).

But no worries there, either. You'll eat like a king and be seduced for information by thong-wearing interrogators.

Only in America.

Life in America is good. Having utterly escaped the notice of the Bush-haters (who are too busy ranting and raving and documenting the fall of the Republic and the rise of Caesar), the nation had another Wright Brother's moment a century and six months after the first flight at Kitty Hawk, on June 22, 2004, when Mike Melville became the first privately-funded astronaut, taking his craft--SpaceshipOne--into space.

The Bush-haters spent that glorious day carping over difficulties in Iraq, celebrating the resignation of Republican Connecticut governor John Rowling, and cheering the polls that showed Bush dropping 13% points in his favorability in handling the war on terror while aspiring-candidate John Kerry called Bush an obstructionist for supporting the federal patient's bill of rights.

Please. A private American citizen with private funding entered earth's orbit in his own spaceship and returned safely to earth, for crying out loud!

More recently, on March 4, 2005, the nation had another Lindbergh moment when Steve Fosset flew his Globalflyer around the world non-stop (the first to do so).

Did any Bush-Haters sing a paean to the American spirit of adventure and know-how self-evidently being alive and well? No, because good news is bad news for the Bush-hater, so it's ignored (if not overlooked in the preoccupying search for disaster).

The day before that, the nation's capital saw something it hadn't seen in 34 years when the new Major League ballteam the Washington Nationals took the field for an exhibition game against the NY Mets, and won 5-3 (their first game is this weekend, at the re-vamped RFK stadium, which was more-or-less mothballed since the Redskins left for Fed Ex field).

Okay, so I'm a Mets fan, but that's not stopping me from cheering the fact that when I look out and see America today, I smell apple pie. But not the Bush-haters. No. They see a strange, alien, and sinister corporate entity ensconsed in the White House and disfiguring the America they "remember."

One more time: What America is that again?

America is therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the world's history shall reveal itself.

George W. Hegel

Don't stop thinking about tomorrow.

President Bill Clinton (reciting Fleetwood Mac)

America is the dream of Pericles.

John (me)