Does it seem like we've been at war in Iraq for almost four and a half years? Does it seem like we've been at war since September 11, 2001? Do you see the emotional strain on your neighbors, friends or family? Do you have to dodge anti-war protesters on the way to work? Are there large enclaves of young people trying to change this nation and its policies? Is there a swelling underground of revolutionaries in this country who are willing to go against the powers that be?

No.

I hear about Cindy Sheehan threatening to run against Nancy Pelosi, and I have a couple of thoughts. One is that Sheehan might be truly crazy, and that she, amazingly, might also be one of the only people who could truly be a revolutionary.

So where is the outrage?

Well, I broke this week, raving and lashing out and crying to the heavens, but it wasn't about the war. No matter how much I don't support this war and the foreign policies of the government, it was the stock market that broke me. It was money. Not an ideology. Not killing thousands of Americans. Not killing millions of Iraqis. Nope, it was losing a few thousand in the stock market.

And there lies the dilemma. When it comes down to it, I'm more important to me than the military, the people of Iraq and our stumbling, bumbling government. And I will move to protect myself before I even think about trying to change our country for the better.

I am not alone. There are a little over 300 million people in this country who think in this exact same way.

I wonder where all the revolutionaries went. I wonder if they were bought off just like me.

Watching The US vs John Lennon on VH1 last night (commercial free, because who really wants to sponsor dissent?), it wasn't the FBI spying on Lennon that surprised me. It was the amount of people who were working (like it was their job) to try and change this nation. Not politicians who were trying to get elected. Nope, these were people who were trying to affect change from outside the system.

I wonder where they have gone. Even the ones who are still alive from that time have receded from protests. They are done, and they didn't accomplish a whole lot. They protested the Vietnam war for years and years and years, and government just saw them as enemies of the state. It has been said that Nixon was tormented about the war. In twenty years will anyone say Bush was ever tormented about the Iraq war?

No one is sweating this. A trillion dollars down, and we still don't care. Closing in on 4000 dead, and we still don't care. Oh sure, politicians talk about it. And they say we should get out (now, eventually, sometime, before we're all dead and in the ground), but both Presidential candidates in 1968 said the same thing. Nixon had a "secret plan" to get out of Vietnam. So secret he never told anyone or tried to implement it.

Almost 40 years later and almost everyone is kind of saying the same thing. We're going to finish this war, someday.

If we're still saying this in 2010 (no matter who is President or what the composition of congress is), will anyone be surprised?

The only people who seem to be willing to risk their necks are the men and women in the armed forces, but then again, it is their job. They aren't going to put their weapons down, desert their posts and tell their leaders this is a fucked up war. Just like the rest of us, they aren't going to give up their paychecks for ideological change.

There is a reason we are constantly inundated about getting ready for retirement (even if you're just out of college), staying healthy (with a generous dose of health insurance, supplemental insurance and prescription drugs) and planning for the rest of our lives from getting married to having children to buying funeral plots. If you're working for the promise of the rest of your life, you can't even think about getting out of the system to change it.

We're all slaves to the American Dream.

Our last revolutionary war was won decades ago. And it was won by those who fought against the revolution. The establishment opened its well funded arms and gathered pretty much everyone into its grasp. We all drank the Kool-Aid.

The revolutionaries disappeared, never to be heard from again. Except to appear on self-aggrandizing retrospectives on cable talking about the glory days, looking tanned and clean with neat haircuts.

Matt Worley wanted to change the world, found out how much it would cost and decided the world was just fine the way it was.