I think I know from whence cometh this malaise.

Every morning, when I listen to the news, I feel like I'm stuck on a trahs-littered four-lane street, waiting for the light to change, without so much as a scrap, a single leaf, of anything green and growing to be seen. Of course, yes, that's usually exactly where I am, but it's more the metaphor of the thing. I listen to what's going on in Iraq and with our government and how more and more rights are being stripped from us and how it's becoming even more socially acceptable to be stupid, and I just feel so helpless.

This morning, I listened to a report on more execution-style slayings and mosque bombings in Iraq, and a loud voice in my head screamed, "We have destroyed their country."

Then I head about Condoleeza Rice advising the government of Afghanistan to stop prosecuting a Muslin man who's converted to Christianity by trotting out that well-worn and increasingly hollow statement about how our country was founded on the idea of religious freedom and how it's our most cherished liberty, and we revel in religious freedom here. Sure. If you're a radical fundamentalist Christian.

Maybe I need to start listening to my iPod in the car.