August, 2001

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee more than fresh water,more than alternative fuels that would break our addiction, more than fast, efficient ground transportation. But mostly I love thee more than the next big threat, the limiting of the limitless, the scourge upon the earth who's shadow darkens the doorway, its throat parched.

Thus has spoken our President of his love of missile defense.

Thus has he embraced the hundred billion (or was it two or was it three, or will it be ten) to find a bullet in the sky and shoot it down. Bullet to bullet, that's our man. Standing tall, thumbs hooked in his gunbelt and our treasury, gazing flinty-eyed into the sunset where no enemy rides. The enemy will come more modestly, George. No flashy intercontinental ballistic missiles. Perhaps a suitcase bomb in lower Manhattan, some carrier of plague in the waters of Lake Michigan or computer virus to bring down the financial networks, but it ain't coming in on a missile, George.

Read my lips, there is no Judgment Day from space, just a series of low tech harassments that may test our will, threaten the comfort of a world we had thought to be comfortable (but it isn't and there's the lie). This is the century of being nibbled, the time of numberless Davids with nary a Goliath in sight. Been seein' too many movies, George, hearin' too many whispers in the night from the armaments boys. It's comin', for sure it's comin', but it's comin' under the door George and not down the chimney, so all that standing on the roof is just looking in the wrong direction.

Which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the well running dry. It's hot and dry down there in Texas, George. Getting' hotter, getting' dryer and the funny thing is it's getting' dryer up where Daddy lives too. Beginning to parch real close to the Great Lakes, running out of water so bad in Brother's state that the rivers are backing up with seawater and those are the rivers we can see, the ones up on top of the land that we go fishing in and canoe down and pollute a little, but not so bad that they don't still look pretty. But it's the other kind that are in worse shape, George---the ones we can't see, that supply the wells our towns depend on and the irrigation our cropland has come more and more to need---they're called aquifers, George and they're dropping like dotcom stocks.

Out of sight, out of mind. Not a problem for twenty years, not gonna happen on your watch.

Not any fun worrying ‘bout stuff nobody sees, too much the vision thing and I know you think it's the vision thing that ran your daddy out, all those points of light an' such.

But it's not, George. The vision thing was just fine and the polls proved it, but he never went on with the vision and voters don't like to be teased.

Let's look at your position for a moment and look at this whole issue cold-heartedly rather than as a vision issue. You're not very secure, George---an unelected president in a whole lot of minds. How're you going to run successfully next time around? Why not co-opt your opponant, become more Al Gore than Al Gore is? Now there's a vision issue to wrap your administration around.

Scrap that useless Star Wars thing and spend some really big bucks on desalinization and satellite solar power and bullet trains---get the vision whipped up and put some guts in it. Solve some of the current problems and bring your constituency on board, all those heads of corporations who need another profit structure. Give ‘em a massive transportation honeypot like Eisenhower did---the skies are too crowded anyway. Call the oil boys in and turn them into energy boys, their aquifers are running dry as well. Give ‘em satellite solar and tens of billions to get it up and running. Acknowledge the profit in water and who controls it as you push desalinization technology---what the hell, the world's four-fifths water and the ranch is dry as a bone. Take Al Gore's bone out of his mouth and bury it in your own back yard.

It's the vision thing, George and vision is not yet dead. It's the re-election thing, George and the way to whip your enemy is to take the gun out of his hand. Now, stand up tall and hook your thumbs in your greenbelt.

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