The most depressing thing about the whole situation is the failure of resistance to get organized. Bush & co. probably don't labor under the idea that they have a mandate, but I think they have a very accurate perception that some combination of self-absorbed worry and narcotized indifference will prevent resistance from reaching critical mass. I blame the American people. They don't particularly want empire, but they like the bread and circuses that empire provides, and they'll do nothing so long as the VCRs, PDAs and SUVs keep coming. There is absolutely nothing preventing us from organizing the vote to remind financial power that it is not sacred, but is tolerated insofar as it contributes to the common good, and jeopardizes itself when it becomes destructive of that end (to borrow a better writer's phrase). But we will only respond to emotional, symbolic, hot-button issues (flag-burning, gun control) and not sit still to sift through serious discussions of economics and geopolitics. I found this to be the starkest difference between American and European journalism, print or broadcast, in the years I lived outside the US.

The consistency with which we vote against our own interests is disheartening; we are smug and comfy, and it can happen here because we don't mind a bit if it does. It will not be dramatic. Heck, it's gone pretty far by very measurable standards, yet we who are discussing it are wondering, only half-jokingly, whether we're being paranoid.

I have no idea what could shake us out of this complacency. If not 9-11, what? The Pax Americana looks very much like the Pax Romana. The Romans never woke up at all (not that they didn't have plenty of Cassandras. to mix my allusions), but even by the second century, some were moving to self-sufficient villas, telling the servus who could smith a little that his son would have to learn the trade so he might as well consider "smith" his name, and the dark ages had begun. Keep singing the truth to power, friends. I think folksong's headed for more importance than it's had for a long time.

Adam (glumphy on Monday morning)