This week was the week of Rita-fear. A short-term anxiety affecting most of the country, even though it's for different reasons, depending on where you live.

If you lived or have been working on cleaning up the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, the fear of re-flooding was very real (and it happened). I'm not sure how many people were hysterical around there, I kind of got the feeling most people were thinking, "Oh shit, not this again." But when you're already waist-deep in the muck, you can't get much dirtier.

The Prez and his staff were in full-on football comeback mode. When they played Katrina a few weeks back, they weren't really ready. They'd always done well with these things, but, boy, was their defense shoddy. And they got the crap beat out of them. But this time, "We will beat Rita! We will be ready! This is the game we've been looking forward to!" They were looking for a good game to return confidence to the home crowd. Rita turned out to be less of a foe than they were ready for. Houston is wet, but it's more like taking a few days off to shovel the snow out after a blizzard. Houston will not have to be rebuilt. Does this make Bush 1-1 in the hurricane season? A win is a win, right? Tax cuts for everyone!

The newspaper I read ran Rita stories in bold type on the top of the front page all week. If someone doesn't hear our cries (out here in the desert) this time, they aren't listening. I desperately tried to find some real news, but came up short most of the time. Oh yeah, by the way, the US military death toll in Iraq passed 1,900.

The 401K administrator for our company came in and told us about how gas prices were going to be high forever. How people may differentiate on where the economy is going, but it's all hurricanes and China drinking our oil. Rita was going to be another Katrina, and, dammit, we needed to buckle up and learn how to save our money. I'm glad we didn't have this meeting when we were supposed to (about a month and a half ago), because we would have missed the fire and brimstone.

This isn't the wake up call I would have predicted. But I don't get paid to prognosticate the future of humanity. And so I have to wonder, a bit, if this huge shift in public thinking will stick around for long. Is this a lasting change or just a knee-jerk reaction to current situations. Will we get a national holiday for the day Katrina swamped the coast? Will we go to war to make up for the devastation. Will we hunt down that damn Katrina in every little cave she might be hiding in? Oh yeah, the name Katrina is just our way of personifying the storm. We can't really go to war with nature, can we? Or have we been at war with nature, and she's just fighting back herself?

But all of this is just making my point, in a way. Who are we? Who are you? What do you stand for? Do you stand for something real, or is it just what you get fed through your favorite talking head every day? Do you blindly follow the Prez or blindly follow the people who hate the Prez? Do you look at the two alternatives, buy one of their ready-made signs and stand, shouting whatever it is they tell you to shout? Do you really think about who you are, or do you constantly look to others to figure out your place?

I ask this because I don't know who you are. I only know who I am. And sometimes I'm a blowhard who says stupid things, but at least they're my stupid things to say. There are times when I hear the same talking points from five different people. When I hear a version of "Stay the course" to describe anything from where someone is going to lunch to why we can't leave Iraq.

But what is the course? When you start out with no plan, how can you say we're gonna keep following the plan?

So I'm quietly hoping this is something permanent. That this will actually change the way people think about things. In some cases, make people think about things. I ask people with SUVs if this has made them think about trading those big boys in for something smaller, more fuel efficient. Everyone says they're thinking. No one seems to be doing. But I'm sure it will take longer than a few weeks to change minds.

The terrorist attacks over four years ago changed a lot. I don't think for the better, but there was definitely a change.

Let's see if we can figure out who we are now.

Matt Worley is a research analyst, a drummer in a rock band and a writer, among other things.