So for international readers who might not know, we here in America celebrated our "independence" day the other day. I spent the day in a deep funk, of course, thinking about how in the times we live, we really should rename the holiday "Slaughter and Torture Day;" thinking about the journalists who are about to be jailed, for refusing to name the sources of a report that was critical of the government; the constitutional amendment we're about to pass, outlawing symbolic protest of the government; the fact that abortion is likely to be illegal again here come a year from now; how our government doesn't even hide the fact anymore that they ship off our political prisoners to countries where torture is legal, precisely so they can torture them; about crazy old men like Paul Harvey, who are calling in public for Bush to simply blanket the Middle East with a hail of nuclear bombs, and how there's not a single person in the public eye criticizing him for making such a statement.

I think back on the history I read in preparation for my first tour of Germany in 2003, and how each and every thing going on in the US right now is a replica of what happened there, in the years leading up to Hitler seizing absolute power. I watch my country seemingly turning into a fascist state before my very eyes, and I get so alarmed and frightened and angry that so many people here can't see it themselves; or worse, that they see it and simply don't care that much, or even agree with what's going on - again, just like what happened in Germany in the years leading up to the Nazis seizing absolute power. I watch the populace get lobotomized with innocuous entertainment (an endless series, it seems, of fluffy reality contests, comic-book adaptations, and remakes of '70s television shows), while their civil liberties are slowly stripped from them, one at a time so they don't notice, with an unseen and uncountable enemy's name being invoked each time the sell to take away yet another one of those liberties is a hard one. I watch a government starting unjust wars in the simple name of conquest alone. I watch the military, the job of killing, not just considered simply another career choice as it should, but suddenly elevated to the most noble profession one could ever opt for. I watch a particular radical religious ideology take control of an entire government, one based on xenophobia and hatred, and I watch them quickly start instituting measures to quash all other religious and ideological thought that exists. I watch all of these things and I just get so frustrated that I want to go running out into the street screaming and yelling, grabbing people by the collar and saying, "Don't you understand what's going on around you?"

And then I started thinking about this book I read last year called Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt. You're familiar with the book, right? When describing its plot to someone for the first time, it really doesn't sound that remarkable - it's the memoirs of a longtime high-school English teacher in New York, about his miserable childhood in poverty-stricken post-revolutionary Ireland. But as all of us who have read it know, the actual book is this remarkable blend of sorrow and magic, of tales of woe so horrifying that you can scarcely believe they're true, coupled with tales of hope and light and love that burst through it all and make your heart soar. It's one of those remarkable books that started out as a small-run niche title, and just started getting passed around from reader to reader so much that it eventually became a bestseller and won the Pulitzer. And there's a good reason it won the Pulitzer, and became a bestseller, because it's just one of the most delightfully-written books of the last 30 or 40 years.

One of the things that struck me so hard when I first read that book was the portrait McCourt painted of his father - this broken, bitter, drunken violent man, who lives up to none of his family responsibilites and who happens (I think) to be around my age during the first half of the book. For those who have never read it, see, McCourt's dad was one of the unnamed front soldiers of the Irish Revolution, back in the early 20th century; not one of the guys whose life gets made into a stylish movie starring Liam Neeson, but simply one of the thousands in the streets with the rifles and the bombs, and the burning, pure flame of hatred for the fascists occupying their country. As McCourt portrays his father, in fact, he is a man whose justified hatred of an oppressive government has loomed so large and for so long in his life, that he suddenly doesn't know what to do with himself once the actual revolution is over. He defined himself as a rebel for so long, a terrorist and a patriot and a victim of tyranny, that he was unable to come up with another definition once the tyrants actually were run off. And so he became a drunk, a child-beater and a gadabout, who would take the grocery money to go drinking then come crashing home at three in the morning, waking his kids and making them sing revolutionary songs while standing at attention in their tattered pajamas, as he wept in the corner.

And in a larger sense, I think this is part of the problem going on here in America right now, that is making all of us act so crazy over here these days, and making a lot of Europeans scratch their heads in confusion and frustration. What international readers need to remember is that America has had a defined enemy for at least 120 years straight, without a single break - and more like 150 years if you count the Civil War. Having an enemy for that long in a row tends to make that society define itself in terms of that enemy - being an American is being against fascism, for example, being against communism, being against monarchism.

Europeans spent a long time defining themselves this way, too - hundreds upon hundreds of years more than Americans, in fact, and to the point of almost wiping out their entire existence five or six times over. But eventually they got around to World War II and almost wiped themselves out for good, and finally got the hint (and, well, um, had American troops occupying their countries for half a century as well, making sure they didn't start getting riled up again), and decided to no longer define themselves in terms of who their enemy is. And so Europeans have had a 60-year headstart on the United States, as far as thinking of themselves as a smaller part of a larger global community, and defining themselves as yet another part of the jigsaw puzzle we call the world.

Despite how it seems, it wasn't just Russia that's ended up having some freakouts over the end of the Soviet Union; I'm convinced that a lot of the problems here in the US right now stem back to it as well. America right now is like Europe in, say, 1949 - still kind of freaked out over the war being over, a war that we let define us for half a century (the Cold War for us, WWI and II combined for Europe), unable now to come up with another definition for ourselves because we're still not used yet to not having an enemy. And so certain evil people in this country take something complex like terrorism, and paint it to the American public in terms of a simple, traditional enemy, to justify personal aims like the consolidation of power, unjust wars for the sake of conquest, the quashing of freedoms and public opinions that are critical of the government. And the vast majority of the American public just goes right along with it all, because they too are just like McCourt's father after the revolution, no longer with an enemy and now flailing about, unable yet to come up with a new definition for themselves, desperately wanting to use 'terrorism' as a substitute for that enemy who no longer exists.

And so, I remind myself, this too shall pass - that things will get better here in America, just like they did in Europe after WWII, just like they did in Ireland after the revolution. Hell, Ireland's got one of the stronger economies in the world right now, and the EU is looking very likely to become a stronger power than America in a maximum of twenty years from now, if not sooner. We here in America will settle down again, come to our senses, much like Europe did in the '50s; eventually it will sink in here that the war is over, that we won, and that we can actually stop fighting now. Like the EU and Ireland, we will eventually realize that we can take all that money, all the energy, that went into Fighting The War, and apply it to things like cleaning up the environment, providing medical care to the entire populace, improving our infrastructure and not relying as much on fossil fuels anymore. Cut us a little slack, international readers, will ya? You've had 60 years to work at it now...and let's not forget, even after almost destroying yourselves in the early 20th century, you still didn't learn your lesson and almost destroyed yourselves again in the mid 20th century. It takes a long time for an entire society to change its very definition of itself; I will still monitor my government, don't get me wrong, still protest the things I think worth protesting and voting against the things worth voting against, but will also keep the long-term view in mind throughout it all. I will remember that just six years ago this was considered a liberal country, with one of the strongest economies on the planet, transvestites hosting talk shows, serious talk about the legalization of marijuana, and nudity on broadcast television. And ten years before that, we were considered again a conservative country; and ten years before that, we were considered again a liberal country. This too shall pass. I have faith in that, and I will choose to believe in it. I choose not to become like Frank McCourt's father, to let the anger and bitterness of it all drag me down to an unsavable point. I choose to remain optimistic, and I choose to think of myself as a happier person for doing so.