It figured that Brad would come up with the expression.

Brad’s the kind of poet who when you first read the lines you think maybe he can’t quite spell words in the english language and when you read them again you realize he’s just providing us with slightly broader applications,. He’s got that sort of mind.

We were discussing hazards the other evening, on account of his recent flirtation with trying the remainder of his planetary voyage on two thumbs and seven fingers. It might be that we’re getting older, and it might be that the hazards are increasing. He’s been driving a lot of highway to his work, Napa to the east bay and back, and it’s his opinion that drivers are getting crazier.

He calls them monkeys on meth.

I think it’s the times. The nation’s in a bad fix, and it seems to be finally dawning on a large number of people, probably a majority. The voters blame Bush for this, and there’s a bit of truth there, but on a deeper level they probably know that the system itself has spun out of orbit.

What we read in the paper and see masticated on television are the surface crises: Iraq’s a disaster, there is widespread fraud in mortgage banking, the market’s tanking, the health care system is broken, and nobody can afford to buy gasoline. People are pissed. Monkeys on meth.

And no matter how good you think Obama is, and I think he’s better than anybody I’ve seen in forty years, it’s not very helpful to expect him to save the nation by himself.

Even if he stays alive, even if his people are smart enough to avert the probable attempt at electronic vote theft, even if he beats that whacked-out goat McCain like a gong... even if he brings with him to Washington a tide of new Democrats and a working majority, even then it won’t be enough.

Iraq didn’t rise from a vacuum. The mortgage bankers knew they could get away with it, just as the Savings & Loan guys had. There is little discernible difference any longer between the federal government and multi-national corporate empires. These are dangerous conditions, as anyone with even a passing glance at history can affirm. It’s trouble.

I would bet you a new set of Mizuno irons against a Roosevelt dime that Obama and his people know this. They know what they’re up against.

As the campaign progresses, there will be times when the candidate takes positions which run against not only my fervently-held beliefs but, arguably, his own. The F.I.S.A. bill is an obvious example. Obama knew he probably could not stop it; he also knew that in trying to do so he would be handing a club to McCain on the “issue” of “national security” –– precisely the weapon McCain desperately needs.

I’m glad he’s running his campaign with sufficient seriousness to dodge the traps being set out for him. He’s no Michael Dukakis, who ruined himself on capital punishment and a hypothetical question. He knows what’s at stake here.

I’ve read his first book, “Dreams From My Father.” In my opinion, the depth, character, and wisdom of the man who wrote those words is impossible to fake.

But he can’t do it alone, even as President. The roadways are crammed with monkeys on meth, a national illness and systemic breakdown. Every hole anyone could discover in the social, political, and economic fabric of America has been exploited with no concern over consequences. The world is changing, and our country’s found itself with a failing economy and trapped in a stupid, crazy war in the middle east. That is what happened to the Soviet Union, of which there ain’t one anymore.

It seems to me that it’s everybody’s job now. For those of my generation, we learned some things in the sixties and after, and it’s time to make use of them.