This piece is for the skeptics. Not for skeptical Republicans (I imagine you have your minds made up already), but for all the undecideds and independents, for all the middle-of-the-roadsters, for the person who is right now saying "I would be happy with either candidate as President" or, I suppose, for the one who is saying "I can't stand either of these guys". I've been listening to you, reading your editorials. I know what you're saying. Dare I say, I know what you're not saying too. Obama skeptics: This piece is for you.

"It is the quality of patriotism to be jealous and watchful, to observe all secret machinations, and to see publick dangers at a distance. The true lover of his country is ready to communicate his fears, and to sound the alarm, whenever he perceives the approach of mischief. But he sounds no alarm, when there is no enemy; he never terrifies his countrymen till he is terrified himself. The patriotism, therefore, may be justly doubted of him, who professes to be disturbed by incredibilities..." Samuel Johnson

The stage is covered with American flags, draped and propped and perched everywhere, to the left, to the right and behind the speaker's dais, which itself is covered with flag bunting and a covey of microphones nearly buried in a spreading nosegay of ... flags.

The wall at the rear of the stage is covered by a gigantic "Old Glory" and every participant, from the high and the mighty to the clipboard bearers, coffee servers and floor sweepers wears a flag on his lapel or near her heart. Ubiquitous is the term that comes to mind, sleazy is another, frightening yet another.

The people, the true believers in the audience are waving smaller versions of the national banner in a crazed, grinning, drooling frenzy of nationalistic sentiment, carrying signs, and banners, wearing shirts, hats, and neckties on which the same theme is repeated, ad nauseum projectillum.
All in all, there are more flags in attendance at this rally than swastikas at Hitler's lovely Nuremberg torch light soirées of the thirties.

Such is the face of American politics, American policy, in the 21st century, lurid, self righteous and jingoistic, the face of rabid, belligerent sanctimony.

There is significant part of this crowd as all the throngs in attendance at these events who wish that, along with the flags there would be represented, with equal prominence, the cross, the symbol of the God that they believe has led them to ravage large portions of the world, to slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocents, to maim, to cripple and traumatize, and to displace millions more, to drive hundreds of millions of others to despise with a nearly everlasting hatred, the very symbols that they display in their leering, insensate, mocking pride.

With the shattering of the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001, a titanic earthquake ripped through the United States and quickly swept across the world. Two shock waves of anger and patriotism predictably met at a point on the globe opposite the United States: the Middle East. Osama bin Laden and his evil cohorts were identified as the enemies, and they were in for a shakedown by the glorious US military. The terrorists of 9/11 declared war on the US, and war is what they got. In this cosmic battle against religiously inspired terrorists, America wages war on the side of good and the terrorists fight on the side of evil. Americans have been wakened from their postmodern, anything-goes slumber to the reality that, like it or not, the United States has a mission to save the world from evil. How much clearer could it get?

On this 4th of July I am remembering the words of Thomas Paine in The American Crisis, written to inspire nascent America in its darkest hours of 1776:

THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.

Tom Friedman has come back from vacation with an astonishing slap in the face of George Bush and Dick Cheney over their continued support of the failed politics of the past as opposed to the politics of the future. He says that the current biggest enemy facing this country is not Islamism, Communism, or other such ideologies, but Petrolism, or the practice of sustaining a country through oil revenues. He calls for a new policy of Red, White, Blue, and Green.

If this had come from someone from Greenpeace or Earth First, nobody would raise their eyebrows. But coming from a man who was at one time one of Bush's biggest enablers is a sign that the Bush administration has run desperately adrift and is losing some of its key supporters. This would explain the photo-op meeting yesterday by the Bush administration and many former Democratic and Republican administration officials which was all spin and no deliverance.