What I believe: personal narrative for Anna

I believe that the real story of our times won't come out for generations.

I believe that crime is easy, and that true believers think the end justifies the means.

I believe there is a profound, unimaginable dysfunction in the White House, and because it's so unimaginable they get away with the unimaginable again and again. Normal people don't think like them.

When Bush got in a second time (appointed the first time, stolen the second: in my view), I felt such utter, unspeakable despair. So did my kids; I share too much with them, surely, but also I'm raising them to care very deeply about issues of privilege and power, and the absence of both. What are the implications of X for the most vulnerable among us? That's my bottom line. And the Republicans have a bad track record, and Bush's is positively apocryphal.

Katrina, in my view, crystallizes all of the issues that consume me, and I watch it unfold with sparks shooting off in my head--so much noise and alarm that I can barely hear or think. I listen to the mainstream news, but I don't trust it like I did; too many years of those reporters reprinting White House press releases.

It took dead bodies floating at his feet for Anderson Cooper to grow a backbone.

See how disjointed it is in here, in my mind?