The editors of Inthefray asked me to revise my original letter to include additional information. Specifically, they wanted to know more about the personal events that my family and I experienced, and they also wanted me to include links to sites with related information. After some thought I decided that instead of altering the original essay I'd  provide them with something else.

I don't want to rewrite the essay, as I think it most clearly expresses my feelings at the time I wrote it. I was confused and lost. Since then I have been consuming as much information as I can get my hands on. The essay was flawed on so many levels, but it captured the first step in my journey since September 11. It was almost like a baby picture for me. I wasn't the world's cutest baby, but I wouldn't alter those pictures for all the gold in Fort Knox. What follows here is another view of that first step, and of the steps that have followed.

I'd first like to make clear that the essay was originally just a free flow of thought, with no objective other than for me to explore feelings I had that I wasn't comfortable with. I needed to understand why I wasn't in the same flag-waving mood as so many people around me. One of my greatest memories as a child was helping my father paint my elementary school halls in a bicentennial motif. I know the protocols for handling a flag and, as I said in my essay, would die for that flag. In a word, I love my country. So why did I feel this way? That's how it all started.

Since I wrote the original letter, I have been on a journey of discovery. What I've uncovered has further alarmed me. It fully supports the instinctual feelings I had following the terrorist attacks. Unlike the millions of Americans who proudly adorn their homes and cars with the flag, unlike the thousands more who are actively risking their lives to bring the terrorists to justice, there is an element in our midst that functions without regard for our communities or any other community in the world except their own. They challenge our democracy even more than the terrorists who killed so many on September 11.

This element is primarily the 1 percent of the population that controls between 30 to 40 percent of the country's wealth. Take into account the richest 10 percent, and we're talking about another 30 to 40 percent of the pie. That leaves somewhere between 30 to 40 percent of the remaining wealth to the rest of us, and that is under attack. The people at the top care about little except their own personal gain; they have no regard for the health of this country or its communities. In fact, their corporations seem bent on taking the remaining bread off our tables. They have bought massive amounts of influence in our government and by doing so have left the majority of us without representation, forced to fend for ourselves.

Confused, many Americans are turning on each other in a desperate attempt to grab the vanishing scraps. Race turning on race, women against men. Immigrants against natives. We fight against one another when the real enemy is the top 1 percent. They happily watch us struggle as they float from state to state, country to country, leaving nothing but rubble in their wake. To me they are as un-American and as destructive to our country, communities, and values as the September 11 terrorists.

So the editors want links. This is just one example of the great suggestions you can expect if you choose to submit an essay of your own to Inthefray. A great suggestion, as I am simply a man of average education and intelligence, hence the fragmented sentence. I am not an expert on corporations, but there are many thoughtful people who have researched and written on this topic, and I encourage you to look at their work.

First, let me promise you that you won't find much useful information on the nightly news. The realities we face can't be summed up in a thirty-second sound bite or two-minute story. Most of what is broadcast on the nightly news is "spin." Spin distorts information in favor of the person or organization that puts it out. For example, sometimes you will hear a politician say that unemployment is at an all-time low. It's true, but what he doesn't go on to explain is that most of the new jobs that have been created pay poverty-line wages.

I honestly can't say that I've found more than a couple sites that deal with these topics and are worth recommending. Everything out there is either bleeding-heart leftist or drum-banging right-wing. I'm sure there are some good sites out there. I just haven't found them. I've asked that my e-mail be included with this piece, and I encourage anyone with any decent links to let me know about them.

I can suggest some useful books. Many of you have probably heard of Michael Moore. He is the writer/director of the highest-grossing non-fiction film, Roger & Me. This film most clearly illustrates what happened all over the heartland as I was growing up in Toledo, Ohio. Back then it was the working class that was getting most of the pink slips. (Nowadays, white-collar jobs are being slashed at a similar, if not greater, rate.) Moore also wrote a book called Downsize This! He has the remarkable ability to take extremely depressing facts and explain them with a humorous edge.

For an in-depth report on the downsizing of America look no further than The Philadelphia Inquirer's 1996 series, "America: Who Stole the Dream?" It can be found at www.backlash.com. Warning: If you're one of the 70 percent of middle/working-class Americans who aren't feeling all that secure or happy at work, this article might get you really pissed off.

Once you're pissed off, I suggest reading Corporation Nation, by Charles Derber. Derber compares the Gilded Age robber barons from the last turn of the century with today's corporations and CEOs. His writing is based on solid facts and offers reasonable alternatives to the rioting and radicalism currently associated with many in the human and workers rights movements.

Finally, for a chilling look at the possible future I suggest Whose Trade Organization, by Lori Wallach, and When Corporations Rule the World, by David Korten. These books look at how the world's elites are operating with ever-smaller amounts of interference from governments accountable to the people. There was a time in the United States when our workers' rights and environmental protections were no better than China's. Guess what? We're falling back in that direction faster than an Ohio rain. The greatest democracy in the world might soon look like a Third World sweatshop if the current un-American attitude of our biggest corporations doesn't change. It seems to me that we should be working to set an example for the people of the developing world so that they strive to become more like us and not the reverse.

So this is my new life. What started out as the most shocking morning I have ever known, September 11, 2001, turned into an uncomfortable feeling I had to write out. That turned into an essay that I thought would get me lynched if it saw the light of day. (Much to my surprise, it was warmly accepted, even by my well-to-do, Republican friends.) And that sent me off on my journey of discovery.

My education continues. I have never been much interested in soapboxing, but what I have learned in the last few weeks leaves me little choice. It's kind of like not wanting to get hit by a bus, but being unable to sit and watch a child get hit by it. That is how I feel.

Let me leave you with one more thing that I have learned. It appears that college graduates had a decisive role in making Islamic fundamentalism such a powerful force in so many countries. They couldn't get jobs, and so they angrily turned to radical interpretations of Islam. Little wonder these young people were fed up: The top 1 percent of the population in their countries controlled an even greater portion of the wealth than the economic elite does in our country. It just so happened that the U.S. government, so highly influenced by our top 1 percent, supported the regimes that these irate college graduates decided to oust. So now they're pissed at us.

I wonder if the same people we are bombing now are the desperate, helpless, and fed-up people that we might soon become. It's kind of frightening. And it's kind of worth my life to try to change.

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