Happy July 4th

In reflecting upon the fast-approaching Fourth of July holiday, I was struck by the poisonous litany of negativity the task conjured within me. The onset of George W. Bush is moving us toward becoming a country very different from the one in which I grew up. Here's a handy list with which I tracked the incremental but sinister changes afoot as the merrymaking approaches.

1. The so-called Bush Doctrine, whereby we may attack sovereign nations that are causing us no imminent danger and then endlessly tapdance about the pseudo-justifications of the attack is now firmly in place. Hey, Syria, are you talkin' to me?

2. As we learned from the Cheerleader-in-Chief's most recent speech, there is no plan to get out of Iraq and it will remain a terrorist breeding ground for the forseeable future.

3. No one seems bothered that our stated goal of bringing democracy to the region is likely to result in a Shiite-administered state that will not be our friend, much less pro-Israel (although they will have been elected, which should make all the Jeffersonians feel warm and fuzzy).

4. The courts are being packed with right wing zealots who will do their best to turn back the clock in whatever ways they can.

5. Bush tells us the science is still not in on global warming but the President has all the evidence he needs when it comes to his religious beliefs. I confess, however, that I can understand where he is coming from on this one. If believing in leprechauns got me to lay off the sauce, I'd be thanking them at my prayer breakfasts.

6. We are in bed with barbarous middle eastern regimes because of our fossile fuel addiction and the government's best answer is to drill in the Arctic Wildlife Reserve. Frankly, I'd trade some dead seals for a longterm energy policy, but this solution is said to have a six month shelf life (before any of you environmentalists flame me, I will state for the record, the line about dead seals was a joke and dead seals make me cry).

7. The Chinese and Japanese hold our markers (a quaint, Runyonesque phrase that basically means since they have loaned us a lot of money we can't pay back right now, they have a Sword of Damocles over our heads and could send our economy into a tailspin on a whim).

8. The wall between church and state is showing a few cracks. When, exactly, was it decided that those running for President had to be demonstrably and publically religious? FDR was a pretty good leader and he didn't pander in that area. Washington, Lincoln, all the big guys, seemed able to keep it on the periphery. But today...

9. Because of Bush's religious beliefs, the federal government is blocking stem cell research, which is a shame because now that every zygote is due to become a baby, we're going to need as much medical knowledge as we can accumulate to care for them.

10. While all this has been transpiring, the opposition party's biggest "victory" has been the preservation of the filibuster, as long as it doesn't really bother anyone. A few more of these "victories" and Democrats will go the way of the Whigs.

11. If the House Ethics Committee was a cartoon character it would be Mr. Magoo. To conflate the silly and the sublime, I ask: are Tom De Lay and Jack Abramoff discarded characters from a Mark Twain story set in the future? The ancestors of the Duke and the Dauphin, perhaps?

12. No one really cares, at least not in significant numbers. This is the worst one of all, really. For all of Karl Rove's crowing about a "mandate", how many votes did Bush actually receive? About 52 million? And there are how many of us here on the Fourth of July? Around 275 million? Even if you were to discount 100 million Americans who are under eighteen - a wildly generous number - that would mean no more than one in three Americans voted for Bush. Some mandate, Karl.

I could go on but I'm getting depressed.

So are things that bleak beneath the fireworks this year? I truly hope not. We still live in a country where I can write these words and not expect a knock on the door at 3:00 AM. There's an election in November and Bush is coming up for a job review in three and a half years. I know it sounds like an eternity but it's really not much in the scheme of things. Recent polls show people are getting wise to the tricks he has pulled vis a vis Iraq. Major corporations are re-thinking their roles in the environmental wars, no small thing given their histories. And despite all the overheated, melodramatic rhetoric both the left and right are so copiously spouting, nobody, save for a few anti-abortion zealots, has shot anyone yet (although we obviously need to keep an eye on Zell Miller).

Frankly, that's why I love this country. Because despite our myriad differences, we're still about the pursuit of happiness, and on this Fourth of July most Americans, whether they're Republicans or Democrats, still firmly believe happiness is tough to pursue when you're using your barbecue tongs to pull a bullet out of your ass.

Have a good holiday, everyone.