There is a particular freedom to being offline for a while. Writing becomes more personal as there is an implied distance from the audience, strengthened by the fact that I won’t be able to post this for at least eight more hours.

I have noticed little talk lately of the ironically named “citizen’s brigade”. There are two possibilities: either it exists, or it doesn’t exist. If it doesn’t exist, then has there been any pronouncement that it was, after all, a miserable and stupid idea? If it does exist, then has there been any official pronouncement that it has been created?

When I first heard this idea I discounted it as the slightly justified but paranoid reaction to the terrorist attacks of 2001. But still, a stupid idea. Anyone who agreed to this idea would be a traitor to the constitution, and anyone who disagreed, a traitor to the country.

So in a time when the government… no. Not the government. The administration. When the administration was trying to unite all Americans behind a common cause it introduced an idea which, if enacted, could very well have started a civil war: “Hey! You three million over there! Why don’t you keep an eye on everyone else and, if they do something a little more, you know, red, than white or blue, why don’t you tell us?”

Hitler committed suicide in a bunker. McCarthy died alone and insane. Ashcroft is trying to send us to war with Iraq.

The continued searching for demons on other soil is distracting us from problems on our own. The members of the Administration have enough reptilian-brain survival instinct to not openly advocate the revocation of the constitutional amendments but close attention will reveal that they are whittling at them, slowly paring them away until the letter and the spirit of the law are at odds with one another.

As with any other prison, the Big Bull has it’s bitches: The entertainment industry (RIAA!), in order to maintain it’s profitability, is happy to take white-out to the amendment that created it. To prevent us from copying music, they want us to not have access to it in the first place. Somehow, that makes sense.

The real danger of terrorism is not that another country will destroy us, but that we will destroy ourselves in order to deny our enemies that pleasure.

And the Administration would call this a victory.