Warning: The following essay mixes metaphors pretty much without discipline.

This day after Indie Day finds much of the nation in a pensive mood, waiting for the pages to turn and for 1/20/09 to show up already.

Meanwhile, the reign of Nixon 2.0 drags on in a seemingly interminable final act. It’s beyond my old metaphor of the annoying jam band that will never leave the stage with its trite 45-minute noodling routines. It’s more like the emotionally abusive old relative who ruins every family gathering by reciting the same endless, unfunny racist “jokes” and always messing up the punch lines. Nobody tells him to shut the hell up anymore, because they know he won’t.

During this time, everything’s winding down. The thievery on high gets more desperate and more overt. The cast of crooks gets more blatantly maniacal.

(Next in our metaphor megamix: The pre-climax of an old mad scientist movie when the mad scientist goes utterly kabong and starts declaring himself to be immortal and invincible, just before his monster/alien ally/chemical formula/hypnotic spell turns around to attack him.)

Yes, a few industries with close ties to the Thief-in-Chief are reaping obscene profits, while the economy as a whole is speeding into reverse.

Yes, this stupid/tragic/inane/unneeded war drags on and on.

Yes, the graft, the corruption, the sweetheart dealing, the money grubbing, and the power grabbing all have gotten as blatant as you could imagine, then went beyond that, and still keep going beyond that.

Yes, the nationalism/tribalism excuse for a state religion of FUD (computer-world-ese for “fear, uncertainty, and doubt”) keeps getting trotted out in the face of decreasing belief.

Yes, the environmental health of this and all the other continents gets ever more precarious.

And yet—

There’s still so much in this land for which to be grateful.

There’s still so much wealth (material and other) from which we can rebuild the old wastes.

But we can’t wait until January, or even November.

We need to build upon all the values that make up America-at-its-best. The loveable human-mongrel melting pot, the can-do spirit, the love of adventure, the love of novelty, the optimism, the devil-may-care foolishness, the risk-taking, the what-if imagining.

Those are all vital aspects of what’s made this country great.

Those other things, the bigotry and the fearmongering and the inter-tribal hate, those aren’t really American.

Alas, those traits can be found in every big society on Earth and a lot of the smaller ones.

And since America is a huge mix-tape of folks from all those places, it’s only natural that we’d pick up on those cultures’ dark sides, and that they’d have melded into one big all-American dark side.

But for every yang there’s a yin and vice versa.

This X-Treme-osity is America’s weakness and her strength.

And it’s how we’re going to get out of this mess-of-messes.