"If some can sacrifice their lives, then surely the rest of us can give our attention."

"Us versus Them" casts a heavy pall across all the vastness of Bush country. There are the "haves" versus the "have-nots" with an absurdly large number of the have-nots believing they are the haves. (A recent poll showed that a noticeable percentage of people making $39,000 a year thought they were in the upper one percent of the country.) These delusional haves, who think the new tax breaks are designed for THEM, are more disdainful of the poor than the rich are.

Bush country is rigid and brittle. It's an unending disconnect from a true picture, like a crude imitation of a Georges Seurat painting where the dots are so emphasized that they strangle the landscape. What should be an endless scattering of fine points that emerges into a solid, unequivocal mass remains simply a tired pile of dots.