I don't know, Brucie. I keep remembering that this is the country where John and Bobbie Kennedy, and Martin Luther King were all assasinated. The more I learn about the world, the less inclined I am to believe that their deaths were a coincidence.

The Stage Manager, we had some pretty massive protests during the period leading up to our attack on Iraq. They made not one tiny bit of difference. The government takes a patronizing attitude toward protest these days. They have to say they support our right to protest, because our constitution guarantees it, but they do everything in their power to discredit those who are protesting. And let's not forget that this is the country where the National Guard opened fire on university students with live ammunition during protests against the Vietnam War.

And they have the news media in their pockets (or the news media has the government in their pockets, not sure which), so a lot of the time, protests hardly get any coverage and no-one who doesn't live in the area where the protest takes place even knows it happened. This is such a big country, if something happens in, say, New York, and doesn't get reported in the news, most of the rest of the country won't know anything about it.

Ted Kennedy got put on one of their lists, and nobody who's talking even knows why. Now he gets harrassed at the airport when he's trying to travel by plane. It's insane. This country is governed by madmen (and a few madwomen).