"There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life." -- Frank Zappa

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Not because Gold Bond pays money, but because America deserves a pimple-free ass.

I would like to encourage you to enjoy this particular Independence Day. I mean really enjoy it. Because I really truly believe that freedom as Americans know it today will be history within 25 years.

Now in political oratory this is what's known as a hook, and once you start with appealing to a fear, you move to appealing to a hope -- "freedom as Americans know it today will be history within 25 years -- unless we do something about it!"

Trouble is, I don't see this as idle rhetoric or oratory.

***

Let me set the scene. I'm hiking the beach. A hot afternoon, this July 3rd, and I'm working on a Fourth of July essay, working out the construction in my mind.

George Washington, who warned against foreign entanglements, would be thrilled to know the U.S. now has a standing army of more than a million people, and that nearly half of them are currently abroad.

Thomas Jefferson, who said he'd prefer a country with newspapers and no government to a country with a government and no newspapers, would be thrilled to see media conglomerates choking debate, limiting coverage and being more interested in making money than exposing wrongdoing. I tell ya, the media coverage of the Iraqi campaign would have made any state-run media proud.

I keep working on timelines and factoids -- soldiers who fought in World War I, The War To End All Wars, would be pleased to know the Model Ts they drove then got better gas mileage than the Fords of today -- and I make my way back inland to start typing.

So I'm sitting at the Mac with CNN's Inside Politics in the background, and here comes political analyst Bill Schneider with a poll. Would the Founding Fathers be pleased or displeased with how things have turned out in America? Look at that, I say to myself -- the exact same question I've been mulling.

The poll reported, essentially, a 50-50 split between pleased and displeased. No surprise, really -- Bush v. Gore in 2000 pretty much proved we're a country split right down the middle.

The surprise to me in Schneider's poll was the utter clarity of the demographic breakdown. Ask a rich person if the Founding Fathers would be pleased with things, and the answer is yes. Ask a poor person and the answer is no.

What a powerful message there.

***

I wonder how many people will send Fourth of July emails out on Windows machines today. I wonder how many people will do their holiday shopping at Wal-Mart. I wonder how many people will go see the latest blockbuster movie from the big media conglomerates. And I wonder how many people will stop to think about the growing rift between giant and small, super-rich and working-poor, and what it means for our society.

People should remember it's called capitalism, not laborism, and that money is far more important than a person's work. That's the sort of situation found in Third World countries and Banana Republic dictatorships. Americans may have this benign smugness that it can't happen here, but in many ways it is already happening here. George Bush is on path to become the first president since Herbert Hoover to have net job losses in his term, yet his tax cuts and economic policies favor his fellow travelers in the monied class.

American politicians routinely bashed Banana Republic leaders for ripping off their people to enrich the ruling junta. It's happening in large part here today, but if someone says such a thing, they sound like a kook, a radical -- it's too far-fetched, too un-American, to be taken seriously.

That's why I say enjoy this Independence Day. As George Orwell said, if the government and the media control the language, they'll control the thought.

It takes intelligence and an appreciation of history and economics and sociology to spot these lies; do you think it's coincidence that schools and media keep getting dumbed down? Do you think it's a coincidence that schools remain in large part financed by property taxes? What a way to guarantee that the poor will not only remain poor, they'll remain stupid, too.

There are a number of unpleasant truths in our world today, but Americans prefer polite myths to harsh realities. People are dying in this occupation-cum-liberation of Iraq, yet the myths survive. Pardon my pessimism that the economic lies that could fracture this country will be exposed anytime soon.

Happy Independence Day indeed.

And to think people died for this...