HORSE OUT OF BARN, CLOSE THE DOOR AND TOSS AROUND THE ROADAPPLES

LOST is gratefully relieved that "the day" is over. It was everywhere yesterday, remember, remember, remember. Why? For so many in the Bush regime, they want us to remember anger, hate, fear, base emotions that will dull our senses, cull our consciences, and dun our calm voices of dissension and disagreement while they plot a course for "what's best" for our country. Too late. That ship left the dock and took the horse with it.

The goodwill, the unity, the sense of "us" which welled up like the mother lode strike five years ago, has tapered to a trickle. That trickle won't go away anytime soon - so there will always be 30% of the public who'll give Bush/Cheney a pass, and righteously harrumph when anything negative is said about them; a group who will smirk snarkily and echo the point du jour uttered by RIghtwing radio - especially if it has anything to do with lancing the boil that is Bill Clinton and his wife. But many of these are the same people who are convinced that they're not perfect (and have no need to aspire to it) because they're "forgiven" and that sometime - say next Wednesday or so, they'll be celestially summoned out of their earthly confines into paradise - even though this notion is not expressly contained in their favorite book, the one they otherwise interpret literally (sometimes conveniently). But LOST digresses.

The rest of the gusher of unity dissipated. It slowed when the drumbeat for attacking Iraq began, and it lost pressure when that drumbeat reached a crescendo, as it attempted to drown out any differing viewpoint that it could not shame or embarrass into silent acquiesence. Thaat gusher of support faded as the optimistic, rosy assertions of BushCo were, one by one, stripped away to reveal oddball opinions that were unsupported by any realistic assessment of facts on the ground - whether the rallying point was the existence of WMD's, or the anticipated liberators' greeting, or the "last throes" or the "I doubt six months (of war in Iraq)" each fell away. The flow of unity was further reduced when the asserters, caught crimson fisted in their absurdist pronouncements, began to blame anyone and everyone they could (including but especially the last President) so long as it was not themselves, for the debacles they had ardently supported, campaigned for, and worked to create. That flow nearly stopped completely after Hurricane Katrina, and the callousness and apathy of the Federal response revealed that no, we've apparently learned nothing about how to respond to epic tragedy.

So now it is hollow to hear the President attempt to evoke those memories of how we all felt in the aftermath of that day, in the forlorn hope that we'll all frog march to the polls and give him - and his malignant sidekick two more years of unfettered right to encumber our liberties in the name of security, to sully our global reputation in the pursuit of victory over evil, to become our enemy to best our enemy. Bit by bit, the public has returned to its collective consciousness, and is starting to realize that we have a choice. We are recognizing, in progressively greater numbers, that the men in charge had choices, too. We are beginning to discern that many of the choices made since 9/12/01 were ill-advised, were poorly thought out, and in some cases just plain stupid.

When LOST hears the President recycle the rhetoric (or using an old one of his lines "catapult the propaganda") about completing the mission, LOST remembers the discussion in a long ago speech class about the dollar bill auction. Simply put, gather a group of people around and start an auction for a buck. The competitive drive in some, the desire to win, will be enough to get some folks to bid over a buck just for the privilege of "winning." Obviously, once that happens, the behavior makes no logical sense, and the auctioneer is the only winner. If we as a nation fail to express our displeasure at the ballot box for the perilous course of this Administration, we'll be upping the ante on our own dollar bill auction. With nearly 3,000 dead in Iraq, 20,000 seriously wounded, nearly 100,000 dead Iraqis, and half a trillion dollars expended, we've crossed the logical stopping point months ago.