Tonight I write of two sights for sore eyes. In these dreary times when one need only watch Glenn Beck on a given weekday to confirm their suspicions that President Obama has overloaded his administration with communists with a penchant for world government--Where's Joe McCarthy when we need him?--parodies on our sadly probable future, and genuine expressions of love for this country from improbable sources come much appreciated.

1.~As Atobe mentioned on the 7th of last month, our Crusader is presently slogging through Infinite Jest, the mangitudinous novel left us by the late David Foster Wallace, and has reached about page 530 (slight spoilers later in this paragraph). Though the longtime Massachusetts resident's intended audience was never in doubt, his political humor is just as enjoyable for this rightist as for the left-literati (though given the epic's often heavy tone, it could've used something a little more BLAST: War Number for the cover). Even today, those of us fighting to prevent an EU-style North American Union are frequently written off as kooks despite the preponderance of globalists and one-worlders in Washington (again watch Glenn Beck) and the parallels to Europe's postwar economic integration. Wallace, writing in the early 90s, already saw what was coming and rendered a parody of it. In Wallace's future (set about now actually), Quebecois separatists and Albertan far rightists unite in pathetic terrorist campaigns not against the NAU, but against ONAN, the Organization of North American Nations (giggle). The saga begins with the upset election of John Gentle, the hygiene-conscious leader of the Clean US Party, to the presidency. His party, abbreviated C.U.S.P., is indeed quite fringe, the

strange-seeming but politically prescient annular agnation of ultra-right jingoist hunt-deer-with-automatic-weapons types and far-left macrobiotic Save-the-Ozone, -Rain-Forests, -Whales, -Spotted-Owl-and-High-pH-Waterways ponytailed granola-crunchers, a surreal union of both Rush L.- and Hillary R. C.-disillusioned fringes that drew mainstream-media guffaws at their first Convention (held in sterile venue), the seemingly LaRoucheishly marginal party whose first platform's plank had been Let's Shoot Our Wastes Into Space, C.U.S.P. a kind of post-Perot national joke for three years, until

they swept the presidency "in an angry reactionary voter-spasm." Through a series of rashly-made promises and solutions worse than the original problem, President Gentle wrangles Canada and Mexico into ONAN. Never a popular pact, especially in Canada, Gentle used NAFTA as leverage to force it down our neighbors' throats, by the way. The ONAN crest is just too funny:

a snarling full-front eagle with a broom and a can of disinfectant in one claw and a Maple Leaf in the other and wearing a sombrero and appearing to have about half-eaten a piece of star-studded cloth

So much for Old Glory. On the brighter side, the emblem is silk-screened onto the door of a truck, whilst the opposite door bears the odd Latin motto TE OCCIDERE POSSUNT SED TE EDERE NON POSSUNT NEFAS EST, for which Wallace provides the translation "They Can Kill You, But the Legalities of Eating You Are Quite a Bit Dicier." Any Latinists around to provide a more literal translation? Truly, those internationalists should know that we have not yet begun to fight! Though as a numismatist I must confess that the purported patterns for the amero currency are stunning. To be sure, Wallace still has over 400 pages to ruin his master work (as Kurt Vonnegut demonstrates in Cat's Cradle, a promising book hardly needs that many more pages to fall to pieces), but as yet my friend's recommendation has more than paid off, and energized this reader in the fight against the NAU/ONAN. Which brings me to

2.~Doesn't anybody love America any more? Given the post-nationalism plaguing our political and economic discourse, attempts to answer the rhetorical question are often depressing. But then I recall that there's an entire nation of people that demonstrates, again and again, their steadfast love for America: the Japanese. Through thick and thin, their infatuation with all things western, and especially all things American (though not self-denigrating in the manner of our preference for the multicultural), has never wavered. The latest periodic reminder came as i was watching Bleach a few weeks ago, and was pleased to find a new ending (the 23rd!!), wherein all the characters hit the streets of New York. Dining at 5th Avenue and authentic Italian restaurants, hanging around as mafiosos, shooting pool, editing the day's paper as Superman (presumably Don Kanonji) flies by, playing poker, singing as divas, walking down allies in high school football jackets, and of course skateboarding past the Empire State Building. In their eyes, the Big Apple is definitely bright, happy and colorful. You can really feel the love, or should I say the HEART HEART.