What does it mean to be a U.S. citizen? It's got to be about more than holiday flags and Fourth of July fireworks, and for a lot of people it is more. Solidiers, volunteers, political activists, many of us step forward and try to actively shape where we're going and how we're going to get there.

Maybe for some of us the spirit of independent action and liberty is Thomas Paine, and some may look to Rosa Parks, but I feel a kinship with Wendy O. Williams, who said, "I don't like it when people tell me what to do. It makes me angry. It makes me want to smash things." That is the essence of Americanism and that's what I see dying all around us. Part of it is the ease with which Bloomberg passed a New York anti-smoking law, and part of it is the recent federal appeals court ruling that there is no constitutional right for individuals to keep and bear arms.

Yes, you can argue fine points on these issues, but somewhere along the line we changed as a people. After September 11, I watched airport staff confiscate travelers' belongings at will. "Hey," a guy in front of me protested, "that Zippo was given to me when I served overseas..." And too bad for him. Bam, a keepsake in the garbage can and nobody was any safer. Now a new bunch of bad ideas are roaring down the tracks at us, like database scanning, public cameras with photo recognition, fingerprinting programs for children, speed sensors on rental cars, and people are shrugging it off. While all of these small, incremental losses by themselves aren't that much, together they form a troubling pattern.

The shape that emerges is fear. Fear and uncertainty. Somewhere during the 1970s things started to get awfully complicated. COINTELPRO, asassinations, tax law. The world was no longer black and white, no longer interpretable in global stereotypes, and our president turned out to be a crook. This isn't a polemic for "the good ol' days," but an observation that the amount of information deluging us has led to such widespread fear of dissociation that as a citizenry it's looking as if we are increasingly inclined to defer to authority.

In general, this is a sign of a weak people. Frightened, powerless people tend to elect dictators and strongmen, anyone who can communicate a simple and easy-to-understand message and act as if they're in control. "Somebody just get a handle on all this," is the plaint, and a pig-eyed brute is installed. Whatever happened to the Great Society? It died under a ton of legislation. Today, you are in violation of dozens of federal statutes, and you'll keep going down the hole. Could you survive an IRS audit? Even if a professional did your taxes, he was guessing in places because even he didn't know. Toss out a battery in the trash? Dig up a plant in your backyard? Put a snagged photo on your Webpage? Copied a few pages of a textbook? Drove a little too fast? Let your kid ride his bike without a helmet? It's getting worse and we're starting to realize that we're all in violation. Better not to make any waves. Don't rile up the authorities—they can bankrupt you at a whim.

Where do we go? We need our confidence back. When a two-bit schmuck like Bloomberg says "no smoking," everybody must light up in a massive act of civil disobedience and snap that law in half like a bull mastiff works a chicken bone. When the TSA says "no nailfiles," everyone needs to show up with suitcases full of 'em. We need to start breaking the laws that have only been enacted to make us powerless and cowed. We should feel angry and outraged every time we are ordered to obey petty bureaucratic inanities. We're adults, we can make our own decisions and we need to remember what it's like to breathe and run free.

9:42:36 PM       

That's where we're going this morning. First, the nuts.

The "Wolf Files" section of the ABC newspage tends to be a good read, and today is no exception as he looks at a panoply of fanatic fans. Front and center: Trekkies.

Shown here is a 1996 file photo of Barbara Adams, a 31-year-old print shop supervisor who was an alternate juror in the Clintonian Whitewater trial. "Every day, she arrived at the Little Rock courthouse in a Starfleet uniform." Once she explained that she always dresses this way, they allowed it. I don't know about you, but if I were on trial, and I saw one of the jurors decked out like this, I'd start freaking.

The article also mentions the National Association for the Advancement of Perry Mason, The Lost in Space Fannish Alliance, and The Royal Association for the Longevity and Preservation of the Honeymooners (RALPH). And to think there are people on this planet who worry about things like getting enough food to last one more day.

Vicarious Holiday

Another nitnoid who makes our lineup is a British vicar, the Rev. Lee Rayfield, who took leave of his senses when he explained to a group of Christmas carolers recently that "Santa and his reindeer would burn up during their re-entry to Earth's atmosphere on Christmas Eve." This, you can imagine, didn't go over bangers.

Mr. Rayfield went before the British press yesterday and apologized to "devastated" and "shattered" children, and their annoyed parents.

"I am mortified and appreciate that I have put some parents in a difficult position, with a lot of explaining to do," Mr. Rayfield told reporters.

• The majority thought that in his off-hours he works as "a motivational speaker."
  
• Politically, nearly 50% thought he was an Independent, with 16% pegging him as possibly a socialist.
  
• A majority thinks Santa drives a pickup or an SUV.
  
• More than half believe Santa prefers "easy listening" music.
  

Feminazis

No, not scourge of Limbaugh, there really are Feminist Nazis according a breaking ABC story.

Here's Christine Greenwood, 28, who lives close to Disneyland in Anaheim, CA. She's looking at "two counts of possessing bomb-making materials and an enhancement charge of promoting gang membership in white supremacist groups." The Raven's wide reading list has included material about the American Nazi movement, and we know that groups like the Church of the Creator usually posit women as "breeders for the Aryan race." They're supposed to raise the young warriors who will go off and achieve Trent Lott's vision of a better world. So it's quite interesting that an increasing number of Nazi women want equality in the movement to prevent equality. Here's a posting from a Nazi BBS:

"Nature intended that women use their brains to advance their race...For comrades to suggest that women squelch this natural instinct by solely being a house-wife, they are acting unAryan and clearly violating laws of Nature."

More Final Solutions

Finally, the nukes. I like to check APIs weekly think tank wrap-up report, because these analyst guys are pretty well plugged in to what the administration and the Pentagon are up to. The lead item today comes from the Institute for Policy Studies, and is highly critical of the new Bush Doctrine.

The United States will now attempt to control the spread of weapons of mass destruction by preemptively striking at countries and non-state actors it believes are developing them.

The Bush administration's threat of nuclear first strikes as a way to control weapons of mass destruction is the moral equivalent of threatening to destroy the world in order to save it.

12:02:18 PM