I'm really annoyed with the constant support our government is getting from the general public just because a few crazy people flew planes into two of our tallest buildings. And what I want isn't really revolution, but reflection. A little bit of critical thinking. Because I think a few people (meaning a lot of the country) are letting the Bush Administration slide just because they think this is the patriotic thing to do.

In case you were wondering, it's not.

Now, the Bushies aren't discouraging this behavior at all, of course. As a matter of fact, any time anyone does criticize them, they bring up the patriotism angle. Because, in their heads, saying something against the President is close to (if not absolutely) treason. What we need to do as a nation is revisit our rights to tell the government it is full of shit.

For almost nine months, this administration has been given a virtual blank check. They have been able to constantly blow people up, detain them without cause or evidence, badger, nudge, talk shit, lie, cheat, steal and generally do whatever they want--all in the name of defeating terrorism. As if this is something that's going to happen sometime soon.

Would you give anyone a blank check? In other words, would you give someone complete control over your money and life without being able to have a say in what they do with your money or your life? And have a smile on your face as they do it?

Maybe some of you would, but I wouldn't. I can't think of anyone who I'd let run my life without any input on my part. No matter how much I trust people, I wouldn't trust them to do with my life as they please. But that's what we've done, and this country is not better off because of it.

First off, the war on terrorism (as I've said at least once, if not too many times) is a sham. Not that there aren't terrorists out there who would like to shake up the United States and murder our citizens, but the war itself is a sham. We are not eliminating terror. We are not changing anyone's mind. We are not succeeding in what the Bushies keep telling us we are doing. All we have done is piss off more people than we already had before September 11th. Which has, actually, made us less secure and more vulnerable to attacks.

And we have made the international community less sympathetic to our concerns than before the attacks.

We have raised tariffs on steel, which has pissed off some of our staunchest allies (Great Britain being one, and most of the rest of Europe as well), which has caused those countries to raise tariffs on other products that we have to buy from them. For the most part, no one is bitching about this because it hasn't quite hit home yet. It will soon.

We have allowed our largest corporations to lie, cheat and steal from us. Enron, WorldCom and Xerox are only the tip of the iceberg here. Our economy will not get better if every quarter a multi-billion dollar company revises their earnings from massive profits to massive debt, falls into bankruptcy and lays off a large amount of workers.

The reason our economy was so great in the last half of the 90s is because almost everyone had a job. Almost everyone had extra income and could buy (or at least take out a loan for) anything they wanted. A new house, a new car, a great entertainment system or personal computer with super high speed Internet.

Now, even though it's almost two years since the burst of the dot com bubble, companies are still laying off workers. The economy has not found its bottom. Consumer confidence see-saws from hopeful optimism to pessimistic depression.

Everything we do takes longer because we think everyone is a terrorist. You know what, even if there were a million potential terrorists in this country (and there aren't even close to that many), it would still be less than one percent of our total population. Do we really have to have security guards searching women's purses just to get into a soccer game? Do we really have to cause long lines and delays because someone might bring fingernail clippers on a flight?

And we're still naming names and pointing fingers and building up our military--for what? An all out war? Who are we fighting? Even our government can't decide who they want to blow up next, although they keep mentioning Iraq. This, by the way, is more of a personal thing for Bush than a realistic threat--he wants to redeem his father. Saddam Hussein is not the devil. He might not be a great guy, but he's no more of a threat than Fidel Castro. Our government has been pissed at Castro for years. And for what? Castro hasn't done anything in the way of harming our country since the Cuban Missile Crisis. And even then, he was just playing games with the two largest powers on the planet.

To top it all off, we are curbing the rights that this country has striven to uphold since its inception. All in the name of...what was the reason again? Oh yeah, homeland security.

My company, which consists of less than 50 people, does not trust me enough (even though I've been with the company longer than 80% of the people working there) to give me my own key to the office. Why? I don't have an answer to that. But I will say this. If my company doesn't trust me, and I contribute a large part to their bottom line, then why should I trust the government to look out for my rights and security?

We need to take back that blank check and demand a return to real normalcy. Not that we shouldn't remember what happened to us last fall, but we shouldn't let it drown us in sappy patriotism and a straight-jacketing of our personal rights. Because that, above anything else, is what America is all about.

Matt Worley is an island, but he allows frequent visitors.