KEITH GORDON Director/Actor Keith Gordon was originally interviewed in Issue 31.

I tried to come up with something clever and cute to say about the elections, but it feels too important and sad.

To think that we have invaded a sovereign country, which presented no immediate threat to us, under false pretenses, leading to the loss of over a thousand American and tens of thousand of Iraqi lives seems to me a disaster both politically and on humanitarian terms.

At the same time poverty grows in the country, medical care slips out of reach for millions of Americans, and the deficit balloons out of control - thanks to tax cuts that wildly favor the wealthiest Americans.

Meanwhile, the environment is being trashed daily, and government scientists who try to speak out against government policy are either ignored or, even worse, fired.

Indeed, it seems that anyone who speaks against the current administration is quickly labeled a 'traitor' or 'radical' or is branded as anti-American.

It seems baffling to me that half of America would want a return of an Administration that's done so little for the vast majority of us. But the republicans are GREAT at politics. They are far more effective (ruthless?) than the democrats at manipulating truth. For example, their claim, both explicit and implicit that the country is safer from attacks under Bush, and that 'the terrorists' want Kerry to win.

But who was president when we were attacked? And who ignored the warnings in the months before? And who has changed focus from Bin Laden to Iraq, alienating much of the world and squandering a vast amount of good-will that America had after the horrors of 9-11? (And inspired a whole new generation of hatred against America in the process).

And yet, somehow the Bush folk seem to have much of the country buying the idea that we need them to defend us. Yikes.

It's not like I think Kerry is God's gift. But I really feel the current road we're on is a terrible one, that goes against so much of what is best about this country.

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