It would be nice if more citizens took time out to reflect on the meaning of Independence Day, and the Declaration of Independence, as Mr. Nader has.

When I awoke on the morning of July 4 on Friday, the radio was on. For a brief foggy, dream-laden moment, I thought I was listening to the unfolding of a current political drama: “When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another… That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government,”

What’s going on, I thought? Is this the news… or…

Of course, it was a reading of the Declaration of Independence. As I lay there with a cat purring on my stomach, a series of women and men read the entire document. I was moved, but I was also surprised. Surprised that I did not know this document better. Surprised that while most Americans are familiar with such lines as “Make my Day” and know the “Rocky” story by heart, they know the latest news about P Diddy and Mariah Carey and Britney Spears and 50 Cent and their favorite celebrities, they might be hard pressed to come up with more than a phrase or two from this document that is the heart of what we celebrate on July 4.

I know I read the document as a child, in school in the 1970s. By the time I was reading, Vietnam was coming to an end and I’d been exposed to many hours of war footage on the evening news, although I was too young to have a framework to understand that these were real deaths I was witnessing, and not war movies.

People now seem to remember the war protests from that period through a sort of warm haze that also of envelopes the Beatles and waiting in gas lines on odd or even days, and other nostalgia from the time period.

And my recollection of that document is also buried in a fog like that, a fog of nostalgia. The edges are blurred, and the meaning is all tied up with fleeting emotions and childhood memories of the color and sound of summer fireworks display as we sat on the hood of a 1972 Oldsmobile.

And now, looking anew over the long list of grievances on the document, it occurs to me that today the citizens of this country could put together another list of grievances, not entirely dissimilar to those listed in 1776, about our current government.

Which is why, in my half-awake state, I was momentarily confused and thought I was listening to a current statement.

A strange dream.

Any chance this could be linked to audio/video or a transcript of the talk Ralph gave on this topic? I'd like to hear more detail.

Where do I sign up.

And for the record - did anyone else notice that in the Google/YouTube debate announcement - there is not one single adult female in the video? Governor of Louisiana, Mayor of New Orleans, CEO of YouTube, and a Sr VP of Google... all male. The only non-males we see are a few students submitting online questions.

The Presidential Debates used to be hosted by the League of Women Voters, and were wrested away from them in a transparent move by the two Big Parties, to control the debate process...

Now we can't even get a token female on the announcement video....

Why has Google set the bar at 10%?

The more I think about it, the more it seems like Gonzalez may be the key that unlocks this campaign to a wider new audience.

"Big media" and big corporate interests - and that includes the two (so-called) "Major Parties" - have created their definition of Nader, which they will just keep repeating and repeating. Since they have taken over the publicly owned airwaves, for all intents and purposes, they can repeat and repeat it and people sort of take it as "fact" after a while - that Nader is an "egotist" etc etc.

Being defined by the opposition is always a HUGE disadvantage for any political candidate.

However - to the national media, Gonzalez is a tabula rasa, a blank slate, upon which can be writ something to capture the public imagination. I'd say "attention" but as mentioned earlier, attention deficit disorder seems to be the operating system default of the American public mind now.

Anyway. If Gonzalez gets out there and does something "dramatic" - in his own unique and understated way which San Francisco voters found very appealing - it could bump the campaign into the kind of high gear we saw with the 2003 San Francisco mayoral campaign. What is that dramatic moment? I don't know, but it's got to be newsworthy (I use the term advisedly, to mean capture assignment editors attention) and YouTube-able.

Topicial, hip, trendy without trending off into a "left coast only" constituency... It's just about finding that coalescence of issue, timing, and response, and catching the zeitgeist. Opportunity doesn't only knock once.

I'm a Nader fan. I wonder why some people can't see his message. Does he need to alter his approach somewhat when he gets these rare opportunities to get on national broadcast TV... I mean, look. What he says makes perfect sense. It is just plain common sense.

Unfortunately, as we know, common sense ain't very common these days.

Almost everyone has an agenda, almost everyone has a greased palm. The editor of the rag he mentioned - when George S brought up Nader's comments to her on the round table, did she address them directly? No, she just covered her own behind, talking about change coming from organizing "from below" and "rattling the cages" of the party leaders. SInce when should the American people BEG their leaders to pay attention? The whole discussion is so ass-backwards. It was embarrassing to watch that editor try to shift the focus off the shortcomings of her publication's stance, and on to some ineffective "cage rattling" strategy, all in an effort to belittle Nader's years of accomplishments in the kind of organizing to which it sounds like she can only pay lip service.

It is the bane of my existence that it is almost impossible to get anyone to answer a direct question. Nader answers direct questions, but everyone else in this arena just becomes non-responsive and talks about whatever they want.

Nader also brings up direct questions and makes a direct challenge to the status quo. People can't seem to deal with that. He calls it "political bigotry." I call it IIAD - Institutionalized Irrational Avoidance Disorder.

But we can't change what we don't acknowledge, and people just cannot SEE what he is talking about.

I don't have the answer. But somehow he needs to find a new way to "voice" that message. He made a sports analogy Sunday that even George Stefanopoulous sort of applauded by saying, "Oh that's a new one." Sports analogy - that even the #60 ranked players and teams get a shot at playing the big guys, get their time in the spotlight, while in presidential politics you are down to the "final four" at the beginning of the season, and no one else gets to play.

He's on the right track with these kinds of simple sound bite analogies.

It is depressing that more people can't see his message without having it spoon fed to them. But if he wants to be a more effective messenger in this media morass, he's probably going to have to accept the fact that the dumbing down of Americans from the 1970s to the present is much more insidious than most people want to acknowledge. And by "dumbing down" i include not only the failing public education system, but also a media culture in which the attention span of the average "media consumer" has been reduced to the point where "attention" is almost the wrong word.

So to grab the public's attention, you have to do something dramatic and I'm not sure what that is but I hope he figures it out. Some young hip media saavy guy - maybe Gonzalez? - might tap into the zeitgeist and get them a ride on the big wave.

I'm mixing metaphors but ... you get my drift.

I agree. We need to see more Matt.