This presidential election is having an effect on me. I’m not filled with patriotic zeal. I’m not awed by the American dream. I’m just tired, and I trust no one.

This Swiftboat Veterans gang is the worst. These people are so sour on life, so vindictive and so well-funded, that they’re raining on everyone’s parade. If no one in America cares that George Bush fudged on his military service in the National Guard, why should we care if there was a glitch in John Kerry’s receipt of three purple hearts? The devil is definitely in the details, and we’re sick of it all. I’m going to vote for the same guy I picked in the NH Primary eons ago. This multi-million dollar mud-slinging won’t change a single vote.

Meanwhile, it’s wrecking the national psyche. Tension is in the air, and everyone is a potential cheater. People are dying daily in Iraq and starving everywhere else. But our minds are locked on cheap details.

Like yesterday, I was putting a few bucks in my account at the bank. It’s the same bank I’ve used since 1989, although the name has changed three times. I trust the tellers and the building, not the company that holds my money.

"By the way," I casually asked, "how much money is it costing me to make this deposit?"

I wouldn’t have asked that question at all were it not for Kerry and Bush and the endless tirade. Regime change is a nasty business. Everybody watch your back.

So here I am back at the bank, and after a few minutes the teller comes back and reports that I am paying $8 a month for the privilege of keeping my business account in the bank. I pay a $2 fee to make a deposit and an additional 30 cents for every check I cash.

"That sucks," I tell the poor teller. She’s not responsible, but she is available. I threaten to move my account to another bank.

"Well, maybe you’d like to move your money into a Blah-blah account," she says offering some cute name that sounds like the one I already have. ‘That one has no monthly fees and no charge per item."

So we do that. It takes about three minutes, and suddenly, instead of paying more than a hundred dollars a year in bank fees, I pay nothing. No strings. All I had to do was fill my heart with distrust and get ticked off enough to ask.

Anger is key. If you’re not angry in America these days, you’re just not doing your job.

When I get home my wife is arguing with the credit card company over the phone. For no known reason, they have doubled her monthly interest fee. She wants to know why. It takes her half an hour to get an answer. She has to cajole and threaten, and it is only when she yells and gets nasty that the credit card company offers to drop back the rates to where they were before. She accepts the new rates, then in a fit of pique, pays off the whole balance and switches companies anyway.

Now she is ticked off and I am ticked off. The Republicans are ticked off and so are the Democrats. It’s a gorgeous day in New England and everybody is annoyed and nobody trusts anybody. Politics has become polarization and the November elections cannot come too soon for me. Then, finally, the nation can go back to distrusting just one guy. -- JDR