THE GREAT GADFLY:

Uncage the Colors, Unfurl the Flag

It appears we have a few months to once again look forward to Katie Couric and Matt Lauer making their constipated urgent-news scowls every morning, if not well into the afternoons.

I'm not sold on this war. I'm also not sold on speaking out against it.

I wasn't sold on the last war against Iraq. I protested, wrote letters and marched against that one.

But at least then I was under the impression that Bush Sr. was voted into office fairly, and that maybe something I had to say could mean something to someone, somewhere. The circumstances leading to his son's placement in office sent a clear message to me that from here on out, if Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, he can just keep on walking.

I feel like the concept of "Freedom" is becoming more and more of a buzzword, a Pavlovian call-and-response tool to get the masses strappin' the plastic flags onto their SUVs. Today, "freedom" is a word used to sell supersize fries at McDonalds.

If anything, I just wanna buy a cheap copy of Orwell's "1984" and go through it with a hi-liter. I know it's a cliche to call this book prescient, but Nostradamus truly had nothing on ol' Uncle Georgie.

It's downright transgressive to suggest that a person can both love America and question its authority. It's downright sacriligious to add that if it weren't okay to question the powers that be, there wouldn't be an America in the first place.

We don't like to think that way anymore. It costs us too many extra minutes on our cellphones trying to puzzle it out.

Maybe I'm cynical. Maybe I don't appreciate my glorious, spledorous freedom. Maybe I've been corrupted by the French and Susan Sarandon. Maybe I'm just tired.

Or, who knows, maybe not.

It's 8:35 a.m. and the skies here in Chicago are dark, foggy and grey. Sirens are squealing outside...I don't want to know why. My back muscles feel like mousetraps. I listened to "Magical Mystery Tour" on the bus to work this morning, which is embarrassingly cliche of me, I know, but I do embarrassingly cliche things when I feel trapped in a corner.

The air is full of passive-aggressive anxiety. I think I'll bottle some of it and sell it on eBay in a few years.

I read this last night, and while I'm not completely sure how much I embrace it, I was moved by it more than any words of dissent I've encountered in the past few months:

"Today I weep for my country. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned. We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance. After war has ended the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe...may God continue to bless the United States of America in the troubled days ahead, and may we somehow recapture the vision which for the present eludes us."

- West Virginia Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd.

Support the troops. Question authority. Follow your heart. Use your intuition. Make your manifestation. Drink your coffee.

At the end of the day, we're all just trying to live our lives.

May your pillows be soft and your beds be warm.