I'm feeling so good these days about my government. Look at the first five headlines on Reuters as I write this:

N.Y. Police May Issue Landmarks Alert-Official

Rumsfeld: Extremists to Get Weapons of Mass Destruction

Federal Official Rules Out Firearms in Airline Cockpits

U.S. Says Libya, Sudan Helpful Against 'Terrorism'

White House Backs FBI in Handling of 9-11 Memo

Oops! Merrill's story just slipped into the mix, but my point remains: How long can we take this stupidity?

Ok, we just found out that the world is a dangerous place, but America is making it more dangerous, in fact as well as in its imagination.

We are like a nation that has had a psychological break and is descending into rank paranoia. The destruction of the twin towers shows that there are things to be afraid of, but our government's mad responses are making us more vulnerable to such things, not less.

The ''war on terrorism'' has strengthened the hand of those who hate America. The US example of ''overwhelming force'' has pushed the Middle East into the abyss and has dragged India-Pakistan to its edge. The only real protections against cross-border terrorism are international structures of criminal justice like the recently established International Criminal Court, yet an ''unsigning'' United States slaps the court down with contempt.

Since September we have squandered our wealth and focus on a huge war while neglecting police work and intelligence at home and abroad. Hence the vagueness of the current warning. And how dare our government set off alarms about Cuba's putative bioterrorism project while it has done nothing to apprehend the anthrax killer? Oh, and - forgive me, just asking - where is Osama?

I also took the Political Compass test, and I found I'm even more lefty and more libertarian than Mr. B:

Economic Left/Right: -6.38
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -9.51

About the same as Ghandi if he were more radical. Here is the Libertarian Left recommended reading list.

Castro is apparently no longer a threat to the Western Hemisphere, but only a weight on the shoulders of his own people. Bushie says we must continue the embargo designed by our Cold War, but now it is because he's not democratic enough, or sufficiently capitalistic.

"I want you to know that I know what trade means with a tyrant," Mr. Bush said. "It means that we will underwrite tyranny, and we cannot let that happen."

"For 43 years, every election in Cuba has been a fraud and a sham," Mr. Bush said. "Mr. Castro, once, just once, show that you're unafraid of a real election."

Well I think we smell a rat. No free elections in Cuba? Does he mean that Castro lacks the legitimacy of a Supreme Court appointment? And even ignoring our own shortcomings, shouldn't we be boycotting, among others, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, China, any number of former Soviet Union republics, and certainly Pakistan, rather than allying ourselves ever more closely with these non-democratic, occasionally capitalistic model states in the fight against freelance terrorism?

We don't understand. Please help us out, Bushie.

So, this supposedly democratic nation with its famed Bill of Rights cannot keep us safe without disregarding its own principles and standards. And, since we have been told that the "war on terorism" will continue until there is no terrorism (freelance) anywhere on the planet, we can expect never to see those principles and standards again.

HACKENSACK, N.J., May 20 — Justice Department lawyers, defending the federal government's refusal to identify the 1,200 foreign Muslims arrested after Sept. 11, said today that public disclosure would undermine counterterrorism efforts and put the detainees at risk of attack from angry Americans as well as terrorists.

Appearing before the Appellate Division of State Superior Court, the government lawyers insisted that national security interests outweighed any public right to know who is being kept in its jails, why and for how long.

"This is not secrecy for secrecy's sake," said Robert D. McCallum Jr., the assistant attorney general in charge of the department's civil division.

He added that revealing the names of detainees, even those cleared by investigators of involvement with terrorism, might open them to attack by American "vigilantes" or allow terrorists to piece together details of the government's counterterrorism efforts.

The arguments were the latest in a series of attempts by the Bush administration to justify its assertion of sweeping powers to hold secret immigration hearings, conceal the identities of foreign detainees and imprison people as material witnesses, all in the name of fighting terrorism.

In every case heard in the last few months, federal and state district judges in New York, New Jersey and Michigan have ruled against the government and in favor of disclosure.

Should we bother pointing out that these detainees were rounded up within our borders and most remain concentrated in camps (oops, Jails) largely in two New Jersey counties?

And is it still necessaary to point out that in all of the Government's counterterrorism efforts since September 11, among all of those detained after that date, here in the U.S. in Afghanistan, Cuba or anywhere else, not one person has yet been charged, other than John Walker Lindh?

Are we really sacrificing our liberties, and those of much of the rest of the world, and ignoring almost all domestic problems, to virtually no effect in the "war on terrorism?" Say it ain't so!

In the past six months, virtually any allied operation in Afghanistan has, upon examination, turned out to look about as farcical as the next.

Brigadier Lane complains that the [Al-Qaida/Taliban] are "not showing a predisposition to reorganize and regroup to mount offensive operations against us". They just won't come out to play. Well, would you if the place was crawling with some of the most sophisticated weaponry in the world? Far better to lie low and look after your goats, or visit some relatives over the border in Miram Shah in Pakistan's Waziristan, and brush up your Koranic chanting. [JAW---I know, the phrasing betrays a certain British cultural sarcasm at the very least]

Any [Al-Qaida/Taliban] strategist can rely on the fact that their commitment and patience will comfortably outstrip that of the western soldiers currently trudging up and down the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, like any terrorist organization, doesn't need a base in Afghanistan to launch its attacks, while the Taliban can sit tight, quietly recruiting and regrouping, before re-emerging in Afghan politics. It's an ignominious ending to the triumphalism of the fall of Kabul just over six months ago.

Afghanistan offered the perfect solution to September 11 - a massive expiation of US anger and, more subtly, guilt. Dropping all those bombs felt doubly good: it was retaliation for a terrible crime, but also getting rid of an evil regime. The emotional rush was everything; whether the latter actually worked has fallen off most people's radar screen. They're not interested. The selective memory means that what is remembered is that a few women in Kabul threw off their burkas in November, not that many more women in northern Afghanistan have been raped since then in a wave of ethnic revenge against the Pashtun. Nor is anyone much interested that since the fall of the Taliban, the old lawlessness of highway looting and illegal road tolls has re-emerged. Or that in the past few months there have been at least two major conflicts between warlords - in Mazar-i-Sharif and in Gardez - as an uneasy truce awaits the results of next month's loya jirga.

But maybe we can do better in Iraq, North Korea, the Phillipines, and all the other evil hotspots we still have to straighten-out.

Stuart Hawkins has a magnificent show mounted in Priska C. Juschka's new space in Williamsburg. We had seen different work of hers, no less extraordinary, at the Scope show in the Gershwin Hotel earlier in the month, but the video and the wall-mounted large-scale c-prints currently on view in the gallery are both more human and less approachable. More human because each image is of a particular dreamer who becomes known to us in a small but very significant way both through his or her own creation and that of Hawkins' art. Less approachable only because it is so difficult to imagine separating individual images from the whole concept, which is breathtaking in its simplicity and its weight.

For her most recent project "Appearing In," her subjects address aspects of pop culture as they are invited to respond to the camera. . . . As her subjects take to the stage they use props, body language, music, and select English words to bring sex appeal and beauty to the image. . . . as these unexpected yet familiar representations are presented to us in a context removed from our own new meaning is rendered not only as it pertains to contemporary Nepal but more importantly as we self-consciously recognize the image or ourselves. [excerpted from notes provided by the gallery]

Yes, a good-sized book would be wonderful, since we cannot surround ourselves with this installation after June 17.

How did we get here?

How many times have we heard that so many people voted for Bushie because he was the kind of guy you'd want to have a beer with (whether or not he would want to on his part). I asked my own Mr. B what I thought was a rhetorical question, "Do people pick their doctors that way?" He said he thought they do. Lawyers too. Wow.

It's got to be only because presidents, doctors and lawyers aren't really that important---unless you really need them, and most decent Americans do not, of course.

So what about your auto mechanic (or plumber, if you are a New Yorker)? Is it more important to imagine having a beer with him or her, or to expect he or she can fix the car for a decent price?

Ok, let's admit it now, we all really need a president, not another drinking partner.

Sent down from Smith because her educated father thought too much education would make her unmarriageable, over sixty years later she returned to the school she had loved so much, completing her degree this spring, at 87. In the meantime she had been through two unhappy marriages and had built an impressive career.

Ms. Martindell is mindful that the same career-versus-children concerns that led her to leave Smith the first time still echo in this generation. "I think women can have it all," she said. "We live so long, you can have the family and then have the career. I didn't do anything real until I was 50."

"A friend told me that after I graduated, I should take a year off to find myself," she reported, delightedly. "But as long as my health holds out, I need a project."

Apparently we don't always know what we look like to others, even if we try to live two lives.

Warren Allen Smith, 80, sat at the corner table looking clean and gray, dressed in dark corduroys, a sweater, an orange oxford shirt, specs, a conservative part in his hair. Above him there were cheap chandeliers, and the place was done up with false flowers and dancing cherubs.

"Nobody wants you when you're old and gray," a drag queen sang.

After cordialities, the old man turned to his former student and asked, "Did you know I was gay?"

"I don't think it was any big secret," his former student said, his eyes large and amused by the question and the atmosphere. No one had tastes and style like Mr. Smith.

"Oh, really?" He seemed disappointed. For 37 years he had lived a dual existence. Half the year he lived in Connecticut as a closeted man, dedicating himself as the model high school teacher. The other half of the year he spent in New York living his secret life, his captain's paradise, he called it. He even threw burning garbage cans at police cars during the Stonewall Riots of 1969.

"I thought nobody knew."

They stood at the bar for a cigarette, and William Allen Smith, editor of "Who's Who in Hell," detective of the paranormal, inspector of the male form and beloved educator, attracted the misfits and fatties, and they poured out their hearts and histories to the aged oracle.

Do you know what it's like growing up gay in Long Island? asked one.

Am I too fat to find a man? asked another.

The teacher listened attentively before offering a hopeful quotation from Truman Capote's English teacher: "The football boys might hate you now, but they'll love you later."