I. Snakes and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails
Why are those men smiling?

Because everything's going their way, the way their God intended it. War abroad, wealth at home, and now they once again affirm their control over women's bodies.

As it was in the beginning, so is it now and ever shall be.

Maybe. Maybe not.

What's wrong with this picture?

Notice who is NOT present: No women, no men of color, no children. The daddies go off to work, make the decisions, hold public ceremonies to reveal their wisdom, and smile broadly for the cameras.

The Greeks had a name for such unbridled self-satisfaction: hubris. Arrogant pride. (And of course the Greeks learned the hard way what happens to people with hubris, but who reads the Greeks nowadays?)

The feminist literature has made the case against such men, and it is a damning brief. Though written arguments are important, the world as we have it now is far more damning. The litany has become old, tired, familiar, but is still absolutely incriminating, with no wiggle-room for Daddy: 200 million war dead in the last century, tens of thousands of nuclear weapons still on hair-trigger alert, environmental global disaster looming, an increasingly inequitable distribution of wealth, a $500-billion defense budget.

And there they stand, in their spiffy black uniforms, oh so pleased, as their leader robs women of control over their own bodies.

Some worthwhile formalisms and legalisms did come from decades of struggle against this American hubris. Even the most benighted orators now use the "he or she" locution. Laws against workplace and school discrimination offer some hope.

Behind such window-dressing, the suits for now still rule pretty much as they please, with pretty much the same results as always: highly profitable wars interrupted by brief periods of peace, crushed and punished dissent, rewards of power and wealth to any, including women-in-suits, willing to affirm the men's right to rule.

They lay waste to a country and call it "victory." They lay waste to a planet and call it "globalization."

Newton said he saw what he saw because he stood on the shoulders of giants. These men do what they do because they stand on an ever-rising mountain of corpses.

And still we acquiesce.

II. Bully Boys
It’s hard to tell if the old national myths matter anymore in America.

After Bill Clinton said that the survival of his presidency depended on what the meaning of "is" is, the story of George Washington and the cherry tree became irrelevant.

After the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan, Mr. Photogenic, the story of Abraham Lincoln’s hours educating himself by firelight in the log cabin became pure hokum.

How many of the liars at Enron, Worldcom, etc., are going to wind up doing time?

And where is the onus borne by the cheater in every grade school in the land after the Supreme Court put its imprimatur on the massive electoral misdeeds in Florida in 2000?

Still, old myths die hard. The Greeks kept on making great art out of their old myths for centuries after the glory that was Athens was gone.

Maybe there’s still hope for America even while bigtime liars, cheats, and thieves cavort and thrive among us.

The Brits lived for a good long while on the stubbornly held belief in that fairness that supposedly was inculcated in its imperial leaders on the playing fields of Eton.

On the playing fields of America one myth still holds sway. Amidst the trash talk, the forced fouls, and the illegal holding while the refs looking the other way, you’ll still find universal hatred of, and scorn for, one guy: the bully.

The big, not-very-smart kid who one way or another lords it over a little kid. Doesn’t matter if his cause is just. The 200-pound eighth grader who has his way with a 98-pound sixth grader remains an object of scorn, derision, and ostracism from Poughkeepsie to Pomona.

The hate-the-bully myth seems to hold.

The question now is: Are Americans still traumatized by 9-11, or will they be able to see that their post-9-11 government has turned America into the biggest bully in the history of the world?

If they can see that, George W. Bush’s days are numbered. If not, then we and the world will be faced with four more years of bigger and better bullying.

Bullies who get away with it once or twice are not known for reforming themselves.

Certainly, powerful nations are always at times bullies. But in the past there’s generally been a balance of bullying power. The Cold War played out more or less peacefully largely because it was a huge—if dangerous—game: USA vs. USSR.

Now, America sports its unequaled military and economic power around the world with no challenger in sight.

Opponents are at best ridiculed (France), or, somewhat worse, cowed (Libya), and are supposed to consider themselves lucky when they are invaded (Afghanistan, Iraq).

"We're doing this for your own good."

98-pound weaklings are on notice: The $400-billion US Department of "Defense" has its eye on YOU.

Will the American electorate somehow, somehow come to see American belligerence as the entire planet sees it? Or will our bully-boy behavior be so cloaked in the red, white, and blue of patriotism that voters will join the cowardly, overweight, arrogant thugs at the top and say simply, "Bring ‘em on"?