10.
   The night was sultry. The streets were busy. I fell into the seething swarm of humanity and reflected. We were at war. We were at two wars. Young Americans were dying and being mutilated every day. They spent fifteen months in hell without a break only to be sent back over and over again but there was no draft, no pictures of home coming coffins, no more than sixty seconds of war on the fifteen-minute nightly news so who cares? And what were people on the home front doing? Buying houses, lots and lots of houses. Are you down and out, unemployed with a lousy credit record and on the verge of bankruptcy? Who cares? A million-dollar loan on a fifty-dollar house will make you feel better. If that doesn’t work, there’s always the latest Hollywood scandal, the Christmas sale on talking stuffed animals, the Rapture.

   Birdie was right. Nobody was doing anything. Everyone was throwing up their hands. What could we do? They were just laughing at us. They were bankrupting the country and shoving the heel of their boot on our necks. Every phone call made, every email sent, every web site visited was recorded and nobody seemed to give a rat’s ass. ‘I don’t care if they tap my phone. I have nothing to hide.’ Get high on their radar screen and you’re on the no-fly list. Get higher and you might just disappear. And torture? Yawn. Habeas Corpus? What’s that?
   Two little dogs yapping hysterically at each other dampened my mood even further.