Bitterness and impatience

Like Legal Fiction's Publius, I am growing unhinged.

I have never of course been a big fan of the White House or the GOP leadership. But for some reason, things are annoying me a lot more these days. It’s more than just disapproval of this or that policy. It’s a more general exasperation and dejection that’s been eating away at me. I look around and I honestly disagree with almost every aspect of the way our country is being run.

But it’s more than that – I’m also having a harder time these days (probably unfairly) having patience for those who continue to support the White House and the GOP leadership (i.e., a majority of the country – at least measured by the only poll that counts, the ballot box). I've always hated this quality in liberals, but now I'm starting to catch the fever too. And I don't like it, but there it is.

Sadly, I can do nothing to alleviate his distress or lower his fever.

"As you may know, the National Security Agency has been investigating people suspected of involvement with terrorism by secretly listening in on telephone calls and reading e-mails between some people in the United States and other countries, without first getting court approval to do so. Would you consider this wiretapping of telephone calls and e-mails without court approval as an acceptable or unacceptable way for the federal government to investigate terrorism?"

1/23-26/06
Acceptable: 56%
Unacceptable: 43%
Unsure: 1%

"After 9/11, President Bush authorized government wiretaps on some phone calls in the U.S. without getting court warrants, saying this was necessary in order to reduce the threat of terrorism. Do you approve or disapprove of the President doing this?"

Approve: 53%
Disapprove: 46%

"After 9/11, George W. Bush authorized government wiretaps on some phone calls in the U.S. without getting court warrants. Do you approve or disapprove of George W. Bush doing this?"

Approve: 46%
Disapprove: 50%

To paraphrase Ben Franklin, we live in a nation where more than half of the country is willing -- nay, eager -- to give up its freedoms in trade for some vague sense of security. We will end up with neither freedom nor security.

Karl Rove grasps this. We're in deep shit.