When the desert sands come a pounding on your door like a roommate who needs to use the bathroom, to whom will you look back and finally raise a finger? Will you blame Dick Cheney? George W.? Karl Rove? Reagan, maybe?

Will you look to Congress, who didn’t stand and fight — ever — even when the fight came to them and they were, for a second there, winning?

Will you look to the CEO’s of Halliburton, Blackwater, Sony, Walmart and others?

Will you wonder why then? Will you ask something? Will you go back and look at the mistakes, find out where they were made, why you didn’t see it or why it was kept from you? Will you fear it could happen again and want to prevent it? Will you hate, and will that change anything?

Or will you pause and turn around, look behind you and point at the stockholders, the board of directors, the voters…yourself, maybe?

Will you blame yourself? Could you?

Because this mess we’re all in – this budget deficit, this piss-poor educational system, this social security debacle, this health care nightmare, this 6-year “search” in Afghanistan, this shame in Iraq – this outrage in Iraq, this criminal behavior in all aspects of our very presence in Iraq – this scandal in the Justice department, this dark shadow on the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, FEMA and NASA…

It’s your fault.

It’s not George Tenet’s fault, it’s not Karl Rove’s, Alberto Gonzales’s, Scooter Libby’s, Michael Brown’s, Dennis Hastert’s, Mark Foley’s, Bill Clinton’s, Hillary Clinton’s, George H. W. Bush’s, George McGovern’s or Richard Nixon’s fault. It’s yours.

And it’s not just because you voted for this scum (not once but twice), or else didn’t vote all. It wouldn’t have made a difference; most people worth a damn know the 2000 election was flat-out stolen by greedy fingers with contempt for the country and a glimmer in their eyes that resembled dollar signs. And it’s not because you have a John Kerry or an Al Gore sticker on your car, or because you watched “An Inconvenient Truth” or “11th Hour”, or because you watch the Daily Show or the Colbert Report or have a subscription to the LA or NY Times, the SF Chronicle, the Boston Globe or the International Herald Tribune that you’re exempt from this rant.

You’re not. I’m talking to YOU, America.

Because you haven’t said anything. You’ve toted your dogs in your purses, you’ve wasted your nights watching horrible TV because it’s easy, and you’ve given the world more shit and despair than was your right because you could afford it. Land of the free, indeed. What a sham.

How long will you let it go unchallenged? For how long will the jugglers and the clowns have to fumble around doing tricks for you while they swipe your wallet, rape your sister and flood your house? How hard must they tickle you before you laugh? How long before the tickles become scratches and how long before the scratches bleed? How long before you hate? How long before you say something?

Figure it out, America. We are running out of time.