It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of
a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into
privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing
algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the
planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.
These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times. Another day, another poll... The latest Newsweek poll (August 21-22), with a margin of error of +/- 4 points: Question: "In general, would you like to see George W. Bush reelected to another term as president, or not?" Answering "Yes": 44% (49% said yes 7/24/03; 52% said yes 5/1/03) Answering "No": 49% (43% said no 7/24/03; 38% said no 5/1/03) Now, if you report this to a crowd, some Bush apologist is going to say to you that Newsweek is just another left-wing media organization that is asking biased questions to get the result they want. Thing is, though, that even if the question is biased, if you ask the exact same question a number of times, changes do have meaning. And the fact is that in responses to the exact same question over time, support for Bush's re-election effort has dropped 8 percentage points in 3 months, and opposition to his re-election has risen 11 percentage points. Yes, it's just like the pundits say: Bush's re-election is really inevitable. No, really! ![]() ![]() ![]() |