It helps to live in a bubble. I haven’t kept up with the news, so it has taken me weeks to know of the deaths of each hostage. I stopped watching the news because I feel powerless. There is nothing I can do except vote against Bush in November, and even that is an exercise in futility because I live in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Utah. Our votes go Republican no matter how I vote.

People are dying and I am powerless to change it. There is nothing I can do to stop it. No matter how loud I squawked when this war started, none of the gung-ho guys listened. I imagined the families in Iraq receiving the wrath of our military and I dreaded the future. I could have never imagined the treatment of the prisoners in our own prisons. I could have never imagined this hostage business. It’s completely out of control.

Tony Blair says that the only reason they’re taking hostages is because they can’t beat our soldiers. The only weapon they have to use against us is our own televisions. I don’t know how I feel about that since I don’t watch the news. In fact, the only reason I’ve turned on the television in the last three months is to play Xbox.

In some respects, it feels selfish of me to hide my head in the sand. I should be informed. I should be shamed by my country. But information only makes me sad and I refuse to take responsibility for the actions of my country. I didn’t vote for him, even if my state did. My vote means nothing. My voice means nothing.

I’m not the only one who thinks my vote means nothing. There are no commercials for the either of the presidential candidates running in Utah. I only noticed this when we went to Las Vegas. I saw several commercials on the televisions at the gym in Las Vegas, but both presidential candidates are ignoring Utah. They don’t think my vote means anything either.

Even this blog entry seems like a waste. Why should I talk about the evil in the world when there is so much good around me? I have such beauty around me each day like cabbage butterflies, hummingbirds and dragonflies. A brood of spiders hatched in our house and we have been inundated with tiny spiders, not old enough to know to avoid the light bulb because it might be hot. I saw twenty baby spiders this morning. One of them singed his eight little legs on the light bulb in the hallway. How could something be wrong in the world when there are baby spiders to watch?