Just a touch of agoraphobia...

It's a little bit unsettling, and I wonder at its political significance. In this most recent year of W's presidency, I have felt more and more anxious about leaving my house. I wonder, sometimes, whether my anxiety might, in part, reflect the growing xenophobic zeitgeist that has manifested itself in W's disasterous foreign policy choices. Of course I understand that my private anxieties are, in fact, reflections of my own psychic issues. On the other hand, as shown excellently by Elaine Showalter and others, private anxieties/hysteria can sometimes stem from public discourse. When I drive to work-- from my home in a liberal urban enclave into the heart of Jesusland-- I notice an incremental growth of American flags in yards and, in decal form, on the backs of automibiles, and I wonder: When one's own flag signifies an ideology rather than a nation, what's to become of those who love our country but don't subcribe to its governing ideology? My own flag has begun to frighten me, and yet I consider myself a patriot. This disconnect, as Barthes would say, between form and content is amplified beyond what I felt during any other political regime of my lifetime. Where is the revolution? If god exists, why isn't he smiting those who act so egregiously in his name?