CURRENT:

• You think that Starr's fishing expeditions into Clinton's adulterous affairs weren't motivated by the desire to force the White House into a sex cover-up.
• You get the impression from the constant stream of reports and statements from media pundits, reporters and politicans, that we have a functioning democracy of checks and balances.
• You think that the entire "Tail Gate" scandal will result in anything more than a huge media circus playing a melodramatic pantomime that ostensibly portrays our media and political machines as actually doing their jobs.
• You think that the periodic parade of Washington scandals is anything more than a choreographed charade designed for our entertainment and voting pleasure.
• You don't wonder why you're getting desensitized to Washington scandals.

• You think that because of [ insert sensationalized issue here ], that an over-centralized Federal government is a good thing
• You think that because of [ insert sensationalized issue here ], that some abrogation of Amendement [ n ] in the Bill of Rights is a good thing
• You don't realize that the US has been in a Declared State of Emergency since the 1930's
• You think the reversal of state's rights and the expansion of the Cold War military-industrial complex in the 1960's were unrelated
• You think the return of state's rights and the end of the Cold War in the 1990's are unrelated

• You believe that our troops are still stationed in Germany and Japan as part of their 'defense'
• You think that the atom-bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were somehow unique in their brutality during WWII
• You didn't realize that Eisenhower was against the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• You believe that our troops are still stationed in Germany and Japan as part of their 'defense'
• You don't realize that McCarthyism was really about the continued mobilization and exploitation of the 'war fears' of the American populace
• You don't realize that the Cold War was as much about 'containing' all of *US* as it was about containing all of *THEM*
• You believe that 9,000 land-based nuclear warheads have more efficacy than 1,000 submarine-based warheads
• You think the B-2 Bomber serves an actual tangible military purpose
• You forgot Eisenhower's warning about the military-industrial complex
• You forgot about the Peace Dividend

• You didn't realize that McCarthyism and Eisenhower's warning were related to the rebellions of the 1960's
• You didn't notice that Abbie ("When I die it'll be like Silkwood 17 times over") Hoffman 'commited suicide' about the same time that Richard Daley Jr., the son of Abbie's old 1968 nemesis, Mayor Richard Daley Sr., took office as mayor in 1989
• You didn't notice that Abbie's 1968 compatriot, Jerry Rubin, died a few years later when he walked 'accidentally' in front of a speeding car
• You think that the rebellions of the 1960's and the anti-drug pogroms of the 1980's were unrelated

• You think that Federal forfeiture laws are used only against drug dealers
• You never noticed how the major media buries the statistics showing that the majority of the illegal drugs are used by whites
• You see no similarities between the Prohibition-era gun violence of the 1920's and the drug trade-related gun violence we have now
• You forget that the Kennedys made their fortune from smuggling alcohol during Prohibition
• You believe that Pres. Bill "Slick Willy" Clinton and Rep. Sonny "I got you babe" Bono didn't inhale
• You believe that Strom "segregationist" Thurmond and Jesse "scare the Negros, tobacco ain't a drug" Helms *still* inhale
• You think that use of illegal drugs is necessarily drug abuse
• You think that, by definition, suburban drug users are 'casual users' and inner-city drug users are 'addicts'
• You think that peeing in a cup is the best way to determine job competency
• You don't think that drug tests are really political-correctness tests
• You think that CIA involvement in drug-smuggling in the 1960's and in the 1980's were unrelated
• You think that Richard Secord's service in Air America (and it's attendant drugs-for-arms barter arrangements) and known involvement in Iran-Contra (and it's attendant drugs-for-arms barter arrangements) are coincidental
• You didn't notice the correlation between CIA narco-colonial protection of drug pipelines and media blurring of the distinction between the black community and the locus of the illegal drug trade
• You don't notice that stereoptyping minorities as the locus of the drug scourge (using them as scapegoats) was a great way for the government to convince people to accept government abrogation of civil rights

• You think that the racism problem has been solved
• You think that bigotry and prejudice from minorities isn't a problem
• You think that affirmative action was a genuine gesture towards minorities on the part of the Democrats
• You don't notice that the media appropriately casts racist whites as 'racist' but spares black racists the same label
• You weren't appalled when Dukakis and the Democratic Party showed Jesse 'Preacher from the Black Lagoon' Jackson (and his Rainbow Coalition) the BACK DOOR of the 1988 National Democratic Convention
• You've never wondered why Jesse Jackson hasn't since solicited the old Rainbow Coalition mailing list
• You think that the Democrats' attempts at rectifying the effects of racial and economic inequality are sincere
• You don't think that the Democrats designed affirmative action and quota laws to ultimately self-destruct

• You don't wonder why it is that when politicians decry quotas, affirmative action and busing as 'social engineering,' that they don't also complain about the most costly form of 'social engineering' imaginable: excessive highway building which facilitates urban sprawl
• You've never made the connection between urban sprawl and the obvious coalition of highway construction, real estate, automotive and oil interests exploiting white flight

• You believe that all Progressives and Leftists are Democrats and they hate guns and want to take a wrecking ball to the 2nd amendment
• You believe that all Libertarians and Conservatives are Republicans and they hate free speech and due process and want to take a wrecking ball to the 1st, 4th and 6th amendments
• You think that Libertarians are dope-smokin' gun-totin' Republicans
• You think that Greens are dope-smokin' gun-totin' Democrats
• You believe that minority teenage welfare mothers are somehow at the center of America's problems
• You don't question the conventional wisdom that welfare recipients have more children than they can feed
• You don't realize the average welfare recipient is white and has only a normal-sized family of 1-2 children and resorts to welfare only briefly
• You don't think that American politicians pick easy scapegoats for political gain
• You don't wonder why children should suffer because of the purported sins of their parents

• You forgot about the looming environmental problems
• You don't realize that humans are just as vulnerable to accumulation of toxins in fatty tissues as are Peregrine Falcons and Bald Eagles.
• You didn't make the connection between endangered keystone species at the top of the natural food chain and the health of humans who also reside at the top of the food chain
• You don't see the hypocrisy of Liberals denouncing rampant looting of the environment and natural resources while they essentially loot the national treasury
• You don't see the hypocrisy of Conservatives denouncing rampant looting of the national treasury while they loot the environment and natural resources
• You believed that the REAL argument in the Pacific Northwest is trees vs. jobs
• You didn't notice that there weren't more than 5 years of logging jobs left at the unsustainable rate of logging in the 1980's

• You think that Nixon was somehow rehabilitated
• You think that Reagan got Alzheimer's AFTER he left office

• It never bothered you that President George Bush was formerly a Director of the CIA
• It never occurred to you that CIA Director George Bush should have seen Manuel Noriega's DEA dosier when they met in the 1970's
• You believe that George Bush invaded Panama because of Manuel Noriega's drug activities
• It doesn't strike you as an extraordinary coincidence that George Bush's 1991 Christmas invasion of Panama also prevented Panamanians from gaining increased control of the Panama Canal on New Year's Eve.
• It never made you suspicious that via Ambassador April Glaspie, the Bush administration basically invited Saddam Hussein into Kuwait

• It raises no concern in your mind that CIA director Jim Casey was suddenly given an operation for inoperable brain cancer (ablating the speech center of his brain) the eve he was to testify in Iran-Contra
• It raises no concern in your mind that instead of using the single *registered* gun he kept at home, Vince Foster would commit suicide using an untracable and unregistered antique WWI revolver and ammo never before seen by his family or friends
• You think that Iran-Contra wasn't as bad as Watergate
• You think that the 1980 Presidential election wasn't tainted by Republican machinations in the Iran hostage crisis
• It doesn't make you wonder that Richard Secord and Ollie North were involved in Carter's failed hostage rescue attempt earlier in the year
• You don't realize that 20th century politicians insist they are "making the world safe for Democracy" in the same way that 19th century politicians enobled their scams with the excuse that they were "Christianizing the savages"
• You believed that Anita Hill and her Republican friends committed perjury as part of a Democratic conspiracy to undo the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Clarence "Long-Dong Silver" Thomas
• You think that Reagan's military Keynesian policies were actually opposed by the Democrats
• You think that Reagan's regressive tax 'reforms' were actually opposed by the Democrats
• You believe that JFK, RFK & MLK were killed, in rapid succession, by lone nuts
• You believe that Oliver 'Natural Born Killer' Stone fabricated all the factoids in his movie JFK
• You didn't notice that Robert MacNamara lugubriously 'apologized' for the Vietnam War at the same time that the Vietnamese awarded our oil companies exclusive contracts to explore for oil in Vietnam

• You didn't notice that Single-payer health care works fine in Canada
• You didn't notice that HMO's are privatized socialized health care
• You don't think there's a problem with the private sector administering a public good
• You didn't notice that you are already you are essentially being 'taxed' by inflated costs caused by non-payers in the health care system
• You don't realize that paying inflated health care costs is tantamount to the income redistributive properties of a socialized health care system
• You didn't notice that then-Speaker of the House Democrat Tom Foley and soon-to-be Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich cooperated in squelching the movements in the House to reform campaign financing and the American health care system
• You didn't notice the Single-payer health care reform movement in the house which died along with Clinton's corporate-sponsored health care bill
• You thought that Clinton was actually sincere when he presented his 2,000+ page health care reform bill
• It didn't strike you as weird how Pres. Clinton promoted a health care plan which was untenably complex, knowing full well that if the reform bill died, it would probably kill all health care reform with it
• You didn't think it odd that the President was writing legislation when he promoted his health care reforms

• You think that the 2nd Amendment doesn't mention 'the People'
• You think that the assault weapons ban is constitutional
• You didn't know that a similar bill introduced in the 1930's (banning machine guns) was voted down as it was deemed unconstitutional by the Congress

• You think that religious fundamentalists have no right to bring their beliefs into politics
• You think that the Republican party actually gives a damned about the beliefs of the religious right

• You think that the Democratic majority in Congress was soley responsible for the deficit and debt of the 1980's and that Ronald Reagan had nothing to do with it
• You think that Ronald Reagan was soley responsible for the deficit and debt of the 1980's and that the Democratic majority in Congress had nothing to do with it
• You think that the massive debt accumulation of the 1980's was unrelated to the hyper-Keynesian policies of Reagan and the Congress
• You think that the economic boom of the 1980's was unrelated to the hyper-Keynesian stimulus policies of Reagan and the Congress
• You don't realize that if corporate taxes were as high in the 1980's as they were in the 1950's, we wouldn't have had a huge deficit or accumulated this immense debt
• You think that the Federal Reserve is to blame for unemployment, even when it's first priority is keeping a stable currency
• You never considered the ramifications of the deficit (caused by the 2-party system) on the decisions of the Fed
• You overlook the fact, however, that unemployment will reduce inflation, and this effects decisions made by the Fed
• You've never heard that the US has been undergoing a 'quiet depression'
• You think that the decline of the American industrial base and the deficit and debt are unrelated
• You think that the decline of the American industrial base and the decline of unions are unrelated
• You think that the decline of the American industrial base and the decline of the Democrats are unrelated
• You think that the deficit and debt are accidental by-products of bi-partisan bickering
• You believe the unemployment statistics reported by the government
• You don't notice the hypocrisy of politicians saying we must cut social spending, yet they rig up programs like the one where some 15 billion in subsidies to advertise in foreign countries is given directly to private corporations
• You think that the national trends of increase in productivity in conjunction with the rise of dual income households are unrelated to stagnation of wages
• You don't realize that half of working couples would fall into poverty if one spouse lost his/her job
• You don't realize that lower wages for women results in lower wages for men

• You don't notice that well-to-do Democrats and Republicans already have their own version of school choice: wealthy suburban school districts
• You think that school vouchers could only worsen conditions in poor school districts
• You don't realize that the majority of school voucher recipients are working poor inner-city minorities
• You don't notice the hypocrisy in the ostensibly 'Liberal' argument that school voucher spending at parochial school violates separation of church and state even though Liberals generally accept that use of federal student loans or Pell grants at colleges like Notre Dame is a matter of individual choice
• You don't notice that the Democratic Party's position on school vouchers happens to coincide with their last remaining large constituent: the Teacher's Unions and the Nat'l Education Association
• It doesn't bother you that whenever they talk about the schools, it's about spending monies on stuff (like more gadgets or more buildings) which will profit someone who's in good with the local chamber of commerce, but they never mention that all these instructional aides will be of no use to children who aren't being taught well or aren't having curricula tailored to suit their needs

• You VOLUNTARILY watch more than 5 hours of commercial T.V. each week
• You don't get annoyed when the news anchor refers to you as a consumer
• You believe that the major media really are 'liberal'
• You don't wonder how media sensationalism got confused with 'Liberal'
• You don't find Bernard Shaw's, Sam Donaldson's or Dan Rather's nightly condescensions insulting
• Bernard Shaw's asking Michael Dukakis the "Willie Horton" question didn't make you want to stand up and scream "Bernard Shaw, you're a [expletive deleted] UNCLE TOM!"
• You don't find NPR's reports on small plane crashes in Bangladesh or 'pieces' on old Blues legends absurd

• You believed that the Oklahoma City bombing implicated the militia movement
• You think that the militia movement is strictly a white conservative male phenomenon
• You've never heard of the Black Panther or Liberal militias around the country

• You think that Lani Guinier's nominiation was dropped because of her "radical" views
• You think that race-based districting is the best solution that the Liberal establishment could contrive towards resolving the crisis of single-member districts
• You think that Proportional Representation is unconstitutional, and that single-member winner-take-all districts are mandated by the Constitution
• You didn't notice that Lani Guinier's purportedly 'radical' writings regarded resolving blatantly unconstitutional race-based districting by implementing an electoral system based upon proportional representation
• You still vote for your state's loser in the Presidential campaign even though your vote is wasted by electoral college winner-take-all
• You accept the media propaganda that election results brought by 17% of all eligible adults constitutes a 'mandate,' a 'landslide,' or 'majority rule.'
• You think that 3rd parties are unconstitutional
• You think that the 2 party system is a result of natural political evolution and not a Gerry-rigged electoral system

• You think that the 100,000-due-paying-member Democratic Party is interested in grass-roots organizing
• You think that the 700,000-due-paying-member Republican Party is interested in grass-roots organizing
• You think that there are only 2 sides to any one issue
• You think the artificial splitting of issues between 2 sides actually represents the way Americans think
• You think that one party on the right and one on the left actually constitues a choice
• You actually vote for Republicans/Democrats who pander to your pet cause(s)
• You think that just 2 parties can functionally represent a polity as diverse as that of the U.S.
• You don't wonder why the American political system seems to avoid solving so many problems, having recycled the same issues for the past 15 election cycle
• You think that a corporate media hasn't a vested interest in any thing less than the continued increase of corporate scope into our lives.
• You don't recognize the correlation between political sophistries used to manipulate the polity and the encroachment of corporate power upon our private lives.
• You confuse consumerism with freedom
• You think the U.S. is a Democracy