Okay, I feel a little better. I just read Daniel Terdiman's piece in Wired News about blogger burnout. Only a little better, though. Those bloggers Terdiman interviewed were posting several times a day when they burned out. I only posted one entry!

I'm reading a book now by Niall Ferguson called Colossus. It's about how the United States really is the empire that Americans don't want to believe it is, but it's a reluctant and conflicted empire, because Americans don't like to think of themselves as imperialists. Ferguson actually believes that what he calls "liberal empire" could be a good thing for many parts of the world, but that the United States so far has made rather a mess of it because we don't have the will to commit ourselves to the countries we conquer. I disagree with almost everything Ferguson says, but it's an interesting proposition. I certainly agree that America's tendency to invade, overthrow, and then withdraw without cleaning up our mess or taking responsibility for the chaos we cause is not doing us any good.

I'm more depressed than ever about the coming elections. The justifications for invading Iraq have been unraveling more and more every day, and with the 500-page report just out of the Senate that the CIA completely misrepresented the intelligence on Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction and its supposed link to Al Qaeda, Bush's two major rationales for the invasion are being shredded faster than the Arthur Andersen accountants can say, "Shred those Enron files." Bush has never looked more beatable than he does now, but who have the Democrats given us to beat him? John Kerry and John Edwards, the wimpiest, most passion- and vision-free candidates since Al Gore. I can't believe that this is the choice Americans have. I've gone back and forth about whether I should vote for Kerry to get Bush out of the White House, but the bottom line is, I can't imagine myself voting for him. I'd rather vote for Gollum. I'm not that thrilled with Nader either. I'll probably end up writing in Dennis Kucinich's name.