But we – and by “we” I mean Americans -- NEED to be “against,” as you put it. It is a given, or should be, that a sentient citizen, me included, will be in favor of our meeting our needs. But we have an onslaught against the constitution and the economy of this country of unprecedented virulence to contend against, and this is no time to expose timidity by getting defensive.

This administration came into office with the twin goals of attacking the middle class at home and attacking the Middle East abroad. Neither of these goals did they share with the general public in the 2000 election; had they done so, GWBush wouldn’t have carried a state. In pursuit of these unstated goals, administration personnel and their allies have exploited 9/11 and have suppressed investigation of what happened and have restrained genuinely effective measures in the common defense, in ways that raise the worst possible suspicions about 9/11 itself.

In order to attain any reasonable goal on behalf of the overwhelming majority of people in this country, it will be necessary to expose what has happened. Some flabby name-calling from paid propagandists on the airwaves cannot be allowed to divert or to dilute the essential investigations. Among other concerns, our intellectual infrastructure is at stake. When you have major newspapers and the television networks mentioning questions about 9/11 only in the same breath with a (propagandistic?) insistence that no plane hit the Pentagon, you have reasoned discussion and debate stifled at birth. When neither the NYTimes nor the WashPost runs even a single article on war profiteering by administration insiders and even by Bush’s relatives, there are some white-bread holes in freedom of the press. When it is almost impossible to mention on air that Bush insiders concocted a series of pretexts to take out – not Saddam – but Iraq, the public is not getting the information it has a right to demand from big media.

They – and by “they,” I mean the top level of the administration – did not target Osama bin Laden; they targeted Afghanistan. They didn’t target Saddam; they targeted Iraq. They didn’t have an exit plan, because they didn’t plan to exit. They’re not pursuing terrorism; they’re pursuing their own interest, and an ultra-narrowly conceived interest at that, strangely congruent at every juncture with breaking the entire U.S. working or middle class.

And until we have political candidates willing to mention these matters, we will not have free and open political debate in this country.