I work with teenagers who think much the same way that Kent Davis and musicmic seem to think--in simplistic, reactionary, defensive ways.

Kent Davis, you said:

"I notice that they who JUST CAN'T STAND prejudice condemn the majority of our fellow citizens as "crackers" whose views and values should be excluded from the ideal commonwealth."

I never said any such thing about the majority of our fellow citizens. I said it about the minority views and values of our fellow citizens who happen to be a bare majority in one geographic region of the US--the south. Those views and values of cracker culture are not shared by the majority of our fellow citizens in the east, north, west, or midwest.

It seems to me that certain people just can't tolerate any criticism whatsoever of the politicians whose views and values they share, in this case radical right Republicans who also happen to be very corrupt.

On the Bill Moyers NOW program last night, former Secretary of the Interior (under Kennedy and Johnson) was on, talking about how destructive this particular administration has been to the environment, but also to the values of preserving and protecting our national heritage of the national parks, wilderness areas, etc. He said that was never the way of the Republican party or of Republican administrations of the past, including Eisenhower and Nixon. This new Republican creed of greed and avarice we now see began to change the views and values of the Republican party under Reagan, and has grown steadily since then among both Republicans and the occassional Democrat.

There is perhaps no other issue that the Bush administration is more at odds with the majority of Americans than the environment and our national heritage areas and sites, and the push to drill for oil in the Alaskan wilderness best represents that division. The Bush administration keeps saying we need the oil, which everyone knows is utter bullshit. It is the greed and avarice of the energy oligarchs that is driving this out of control train, hell bent on destroying every last wilderness and protected area on earth, for their own financial gain, and because they have this sick, twisted desire to win. To defeat those environmentalists they have painted as the evil enemy of democracy. To show that they are the kings, that they have the power, and that no one shall stand in their way.

That is what is particularly sick about the current administration. The arrogance of their power. Their contempt for the social contracts that hold the fabric of our society together. Their greed and avarice. It isn't unprecedented by any means--it has happened in the US before, and in places all around the world. But people like musicmic and Kent Davis, who so stridently defend the current administration, obviously are more concerned with their own individual power as white man citizens than the common good of the nation, have no problem with the views and values of the current corrupt American regime. The regime that so masterfully gets away with manipulating white men just like them, in order to maintain their hold on power, and the rest of the nation hostage to their whims.