I had a very introspective, mildly depressive Independence Day Weekend. That's not to say thatand her roommate didn't do a wonderful job of hosting a barbecue and evening of shooting off fireworks to celebrate my upcoming birthday, and I appreciate it, and I had a good time. I just wasn't really in the mood.I noticed that this has been the biggest year since St. Louis County outlawed fireworks for illegal home displays in my neighborhood. No, really, the amount of illegal class-C ordinance that people in St. John fired off this year was absolutely unprecedented, easily three or more times as much stuff going off as in any of the previous seven years I've lived here. My first, bitterly satisfactory thought was that maybe they were doing what I was doing, namely celebrating the timely (if insufficiently unpleasant) death of one of the most bitter, vicious, hateful, murderous and destructive racist bigots in the history of American elective office, Jesse Helms. But that's probably wishful thinking on my part. My practical thought is that more people stayed home and spent $100 or $200 on fireworks because it was cheaper than the gas to drive to and from wherever they usually go for the Fourth, down to the lake or to some out of town relative's house or whatever. But along about 11pm on the 4th, a chill voice in the back of my head said in the sepulchral voice of a (faux) premonition, one so improbable that I hesitate to even write it down: "They're celebrating all-out because they, too, sense that this will have been The Last Fourth of July."Other people have irrational fears of spiders, or of germs, or of knives. I have irrational fears about the end of the democracy. And I know that they're irrational fears. This nation has survived worse than George Bush and come back better than ever afterwards; cripes, if this country survived Calvin Coolidge, it can survive anything. I could give a hundred reasons to believe that my fear is irrational. The electionbe held in November, George Bush will not win it, someone other than George Bush will be sworn in in 197 days, and no matter who wins, the country can begin to heal. I'm even reasonably optimistic that the margin will be so wide that even the Republicans can't steal it. But knowing all the reasons that my fear is irrational has not helped me shake this sense of impending doom, a dread so palpable I can only compare it to my early childhood years at the peak of the Cold War, when we came home after a week of duck-and-cover drills to set off fireworks wondering if we'd be able to spot Russian bombers through the fireworks smoke in time to make a futile dash for cover if we had to. This burning need to do something, anything, to somehow prepare for the day that the forces of tyranny move to end the democracy, to cancel all future elections, to cancel all future Fourths of July.Crazy, huh? But having thought about it way too much this weekend, I think I know why I can't make this fear go entirely away. There is no doubt in my mind that the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections were stolen. To quote the late George Carlin, "George W. Bush will always be Governor Bush, to me. Because that's the highest office to which he's ever been elected." But it takes more than a stolen election to rattle me, especially a stolen close election. After all, there's even less doubt that the 1960 election was stolen, that JFK was never actually elected President, either, that he was appointed president by Chicago mafiosi who had failed to notice how tightly his brother had converted over to the Reform (anti-mafia) Democrats. But here's the difference between 1960 and 2000, between 1960 and 2004:And Bobby Kennedy wielded that outrage like a hammer to crack open the mafia in every city they ruled, to dig them out of their holes, and to crush them like itty bitty bugs. It took decades to finish the project. But still, to this day, people talk about the stolen election of 1960 and there's real anger, real outrage, at least among some of them.Why hasn't even one low-level person involved in any of the dozens of clearly documented voter suppression drives in both of those races been indicted? Remember, we don't require proof beyond a reasonable doubt to indict; why has no prosecutor even offered to look at the reams and reams of evidence that Robert Kennedy, Jr., and Greg Palast have accumulated? The 2000 "white collar riot" occurred on national television, with the faces of the paid professional Republican staffers who were assaulting police and besieging an election board clearly visible on video; why hasn't even one of them been charged with something, anything? Politics? Well, d'uh, of course. But why are the voters okay with this? Look at your polls, man; it sure as heck isn't out of love for George Bush or the Republican Party. So if no prosecutor will indict, and the people hate the party that stole the elections, then why can people like Antonin Scalia, Karl Rove, Kathleen Harris, Ken Strickland, and so forth walk our streets without a security cordon six blocks wide?Why aren't theyIf they were afraid, I'd be less afraid. If the people who conspired to steal the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections were showing even the slightest nervousness about possible consequences of their past treasons, it'd be easier for me to calm my irrational fear, the little voice in my head that says, "Brad, if that was what they did to change the outcome of a close election, one that they could easily steal? What will they do if it turns out not to be close enough to steal inconspicuously? What will they do when they'reAnd with so much of our Army and National Guard overseas, and with so much new power granted to the Department of Homeland Security, and with the American people showing so little outrage over the last two stolen elections in a row, if they do try something truly monstrous,I don't quote a lot of song lyrics, but I feel a powerful urge to quote songwriter Stephen Stills, " For What It's Worth :" "Paranoia strikes deep: / Into your life it will creep. / It starts when you're always afraid. / You step out of line, the man come, and take you away." Which friend of mine was it who said that the thing she hates the most about the Bush administration is how much they make her feel like a paranoid, or something like that? But it's not the Bush administration that's got me feeling so nervous, so depressed, so paranoid; it's the voters themselves. I always thought that they valued their freedom, their franchise, enough to be outraged when both were taken away from them, and I'm ever so deeply nervous that they don't look nearly angry enough.