What's a poor boy to do?

It's a war out there, but more so over here in the USA.

People fighting over every insignificant bit of gristle:

Bush knew it was a lie; he didn't know.

9-11 is a great movie; no it's not -- it's a piece of crap.

Gays shouldn't get married; they should if they want to.

and on and on, and the only form of debate in this country seems to be the game of opposite-shouting.

One person, identified as a something or other (liberal, conservative) yells out an amazing simplistic assertion ("All Muslims hate us!").
The other yells out that the first one is just a dupe of THEM (Liberals, Conservatives, Religious Right, America-hating Left)
One gets really serious and says, "If we know Osama and his people are hiding out in the Afghan-Pakistan border area, why aren't our troops flooding that area?"
The other one says: "You're a fool. No point in getting stuck over there -- the bombs and explosives and the people who will use them are here, maybe in Brooklyn, just storm the mosques in America and you'll find them."

And I wonder: "How does he know that? And if they know so much, how come they don't seem willing to understand that the opposite of crap is also crap."

For that matter, how does Ashcroft know that there is a possible 90% certainty of an imminent attack? Might it be 87-1/2%?
Would an Al-Qaeda operative even know those sorts of statistical projections?
Is Ashcroft an Al-Qaeda operative?

And how does this guy know what Dubya really thinks?

The head of a Washington, DC, think tank (Paul Weyrich, president of the Free Congress Foundation) who has access to the White House says people of faith do not need to be concerned about President Bush's public comments about Islam. The conservative activist says the president does know the "real score."

Six days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon... the president made the following statement: "The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace..."

Weyrich says if the president actually declared that America is in a war against Islam, there might be more Muslims taking up arms against the US -- a "real jihad," as he puts it. So Bush, according to Weyrich, is soft-peddling his rhetoric in order to "tamp down" any worldwide activity that might occur.

"I know the president has to say certain things -- and I understand that," the conservative icon says, "but I also know that he doesn't believe it."

Well, hey Big Mouth -- guess who just told THEM the secret score?

So what's a poor boy to do about it?
Write something? Comment on it day by day? Good idea, I guess, but how?

I like over-the-top play, but then I read Mark Morford in the San Francisco Chronicle and have to admit he does over-the-top better than anyone:

Are you there, God? It's me, George W. Come in, Almighty. Do you read me...

Look, I've done everything you asked. I've been good. Haven't I?

I take the message to the people, don't I? I spout that evangelical born-again crap in pisswater Podunk conservative churches across this burned-out fear-drunk nation like I was emceeing a freakin' rodeo in Crawford. And they eat it up, Lord. They eat that stuff up. Hell, I even believe a lot of that fire-breathin' Second Comin' evildoer-hatin' stuff myself.

Why would anyone want to top that?

Lighter humor, sparkly, more sharply honed?
Jon Stewart and his writing staff do it to near-perfection on The Daily Show. In a comment on Whoopi Goldberg's fundraising performance:

In an hilarious twist, it turns out President Bush's name can also mean "vagina."

Nothing to do but laugh, enjoy their repeated ability to hit the matter dead center, and be amused by the fact that Stewart's lines show up frequently in political editorial columns.

It's all topsy-turvy.

Saddam Hussein, in court -- even sitting in front of Chalabi's nephew as a judge -- looks more together and in command of himself than Dubya or Dick Cheney.

No one seems to yet know who John Kerry is, except for having picked up the GOP Hit-Squad's repetitive and meaningless "flip-flop."

In fact, most if not all of the terms being used are meaningless in and of themselves, but charged by advertising with either venom and viciousness or flags and apple pie.

We may not know who Kerry is, but we all know who and what Bush and his Henchmen are, for all they may deny it: lying, vicious, venal, vindictive, anti-American (insofar as America is its Constitution) sociopaths who pursue some sort of megalomaniacal vision without regard for killing and maiming thousands, including those Americans sincere enough (or poor enough, or dumb enough, or idealistic enough, etc) to put on a uniform and follow orders, assuming (in their best dreams) that those orders are being given by someone who actually has a clue about what he's doing.

Charles Bukowski summed it up back during the last misbegotten war, the one in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. He said:

Wars, politics, causes.
For thousands of years we've ended up with a sack of shit.
It's time we learned to think.

Now there's a thought.