America the scared

Lovely piece by Jonathan Raban in the Guardian about the current mood in the US. Last para reads:

“This is an extraordinary moment in American history. Half the country – including all the people I know best – believes it is trembling on the very lip of outright tyranny, while the other half believes that only the Bush administration stands between it and national collapse into atheism, socialism, black helicopters, and gay marriage. November 2 looms as a date of dreadful consequence. A bumper sticker, popular among the sort of people I hang out with, reads: Bush-Cheney ’04 – The Last Vote You’ll Ever Have To Cast. That’s funny, but it belongs to the genre of humour in which the laugh is likely to die in your throat – and none of the people who sport the sticker on their cars are smiling. They are too busy airing conspiracy theories, which may or may not turn out to be theories.”