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By Root 298 0

had a goodly sum to begin with and then invested it in companies that got rich by throwing people out of work, exploiting children and the poor in other countries, and receiving big reductions in their taxes. For them greed wasn’t good, it was mandatory. In fact, they were so good at creating a climate of greed that the word itself went out of style. Now it’s called SUCCESS! and, yes, it comes with its own punctuation. Soon virtually no one questioned all this gluttony as wrong or obscene; it became such a part of our daily life that when this character from Texas got greedy and took an election he didn’t win, we stood back and gave it to him—he wasn’t being greedy, after all, just being smart. just as corporate agriculture’s dicey schemes to corrupt the genetic makeup of your corn flakes aren’t insane or greedy—that’s progress. Just as the guy next door who wants the biggest SUV ever built isn’t being greedy—he just wants more torque, baby!

This Stupid White Virus is so powerful it has even infected ringers like Colin Powell, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice. And it’s created a deep funk—a grand, national funk you can feel wherever you go. It has permeated us so profoundly I wonder if we’ll ever recover.

Of course, we’re all trying hard to forget about the moment when this ugly cultural shift hit critical mass and the Forces of Evil took over. I know what it is, you know what it is, even an idiot like Brit Hume knows what it is. It’s that damn stolen election. Stolen, hijacked, abducted, and ripped from the very hands and hearts of the American people. There is absolutely NO DISPUTE over who got the most votes, and there’s little question now about the shenanigans that took place in Florida; yet he who won is not the man we see playing Wiffle ball on the South Lawn this afternoon.

Yes, we’re all telling ourselves nothing all that bad really happened—get over it, we’ve been told—but the events of those thirty-six days shook us hard, knocked the wind out of us, and wedged something deep in our national craw. Nothing short of one big national Heimlich maneuver can save us now. We’re stumbling around blue in the face, wondering if relief will come in time. Will I have my job next year? What will happen to my retirement fund? Do ice cubes count as a food group.

YOU DO NOT COUNT! It’s a tough lesson to learn. And tougher still to discover that all the stuff you’ve always been told to do— vote, obey the law, recycle your wine-cooler bottles doesn’t really matter, either. You might as well pull the shades and take the phone off the hook, because you and your fellow Americans have just been declared irrelevant. Your services as a citizen, we regret to inform you, are no longer required.

So confusion reigns, and the seismic tremors of national frustration are starting to rumble beneath our feet. The grumbling isn’t subsiding, it’s growing each day. Eight months after the election, deep into 2001, a Fox News poll announced that nearly 60 percent of the American public had NOT gotten over how Bush took the White House— that we’re still “angry.” That’s a long time to harbor aggressive ill will toward our Leader. A mood that swings out of control like this— with no prompting from refined sugar or Oprah— is a mood that can alter history. Millions of Americans, from all points on the political spectrum, are feeling off-balance, unsure, upset, unglued. The rest are in prison.

The common view in the heartland is that the ship of state is running on fumes, and no one’s at the wheel; after all, the designated driver wasn’t designated by anyone— and he’s a self-confessed drunk driver to boot.

Hard-core Republicans are desperately hoping that Big Dick Cheney can survive half a dozen more heart attacks and last long enough to oversee the raping and pillaging of everything west of Wichita. What they don’t realize is that he’s already put the rest of the country into cardiac arrest. Meanwhile, he and his gang are double-timing it to dismantle as much of the environment, the Constitution, and the