Warring in a third world country, three dollar a gallon gasoline, for profit health care, dead immigration bills, laws against smoking in public, quiet attacks on our civil rights, an administration that is above the law, the rich getting richer, the disappearance of the middle class, and army's worth of people in prisons, millions living in debt. Welcome to America 2007.

We've always had difficulties in this country. There is absolutely no way to appease everyone all the time, but the spin has gotten out of hand. Baldheads in suits & ties go on television and justify anything and everything. Just keep talking. Just keep talking. If you're on their side, you spew their propaganda. If you're against them, you're unamerican. Whatever.

I will never say I've had it with this country. Born in the middle of Kansas and pretty much the middle of the nation, I have no allegiance to any other nation, group, or sect. I have settled in the desert of New Mexico where the laws made in the Beltway have a hard time sticking at times. I'm allowed to live pretty much the way I want without hassles, as long as I pay an extra dollar when people ask for it.

That's what I have come to realize about the land of the free and the home of the brave. It's all about the money. Ask oil companies why they have to make record profits off a built-in necessity, and they say 'What's wrong with making money?' Pharmaceuticals in America cost an exorbitant amount of money. Why? Profits. The top 1 percent is somewhere in this country and around the globe collecting the bulk of the gross national product, and the rest of us 99ers pay out for our little piece of the American Dream, whatever that means to us. The 1 percents have their lackeys. They pay out to congressmen, businessmen, and so-called experts who explain to the rest of us why things are the way we are. For some reason, we buy into it. We stay in line. We want to keep our teeny cut when it comes around.

Why do we listen to the same radio personalities every day? Why do the same people get the sound bites on television? Why do we listen to the same preacher on Sunday? Why do report to the same job and boss every week? Are they really experts? Do they really have the answers? What was the last thing the United States did as a nation that helped its people on a whole? Spinsters could spew out long winded, highfalutin answers to these questions which probably wouldn't be true, but they would be answers.

My intelligence has turned out to be faulty, but that doesn't mean I'm doing the wrong thing.

We are a nation of millions, and all I want to do with my freedom these days is be left alone to do my own thing. I have lived in the same house for eleven years and have no sense of community. I don't know my neighbors, even the ones I've met and hung out with at times. I volunteer my time for community theatre, my blood for the ill, and energies to doing simple & brief good deeds or nothing at all. I'm not racist, and I live and work and play with people from all cultures. I have a girlfriend. I know my history. I can point to all fifty states and major countries on the map. Yet all I see and feel these days is indifference. I didn't start any of the wars. I cannot stop them. I know hundreds of people. I've met hundreds more. Yet my network of friends dwindles every year, and I don't even mind. I do nothing to change it. I'm not sure I want any more friends.

How did it get this way? How did the people of my homeland become so unattractive? Why have I become an isolationist with my own society? I cannot play ball. I cannot stay in line. I cannot join the club. I cannot conform. I cannot believe.

I will light some firecrackers (or whatever passes for legal bang poppers) on The Fourth of July. I will even work my job that day. I will watch some of America's pastime. I will grill up a meal. I will even do my best to think highly of my country 'tis of thee.

The honest truth is that I'm feeling extremely lost in America these days, and all I can do is keep walking in the direction I'm going. There is no turning around.

Yankee Doodle went to town, riding on a pony, stuck a feather in his hat & called it macaroni.

What am I really talking about?

Chris Jungle needs a holiday.