After nearly three weeks of being laid up with illness, my head is swimming with political topics (or maybe it's just all the new medications): Nader's megalomaniacal, Green-less presidential bid, which will draw about six votes. America's long-dreamed-of, finally successful bid to get Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of power without appearing responsible--as a dress rehearsal for trying to do the same thing to the leaders of Venezuela and Brazil. The sheer wretchedness of watching hospital room TV "news." George Bush's homosexual love tryst with Barry Bond's personal trainer.

OK, I made that last bit up. But now that John Kerry's nomination for president has moved from inevitable to fait accompli, that last bit speaks to the one issue, above all others, that assumes urgency as we wade into this critical year of 2004.

Whatever you think of elections, this year's presidential race is going to be the most important the United States, and the world, has seen in decades. At least. And it will be very, very nasty. Liberals had better stop being nice, stop being complacent or cynical or despairing or disengaged, and take your gloves off. Now.

Like it or not, the president who came in promising to unite us has created, in only three short years, the most polarized and the most bitterly politically divided country since Reconstruction. His same team has created more anti-American hatred around the globe than has ever previously existed in history. They will stop at virtually nothing to gain and exercise power, doing so almost exclusively to further enrich their friends and feed their warped ideological crusades, crusades that if presented honestly would be rejected by most of us.

I don't hate George W. Bush. I do hate what he has done and is still doing to our country and to our planet, and I do intend to do everything in my power to ensure he and his cabal don't have another four years to abuse their public trust. But now comes the hard part. It will be a long, hard slog to November, interrupted only by two tedious party infomercials and the power of the White House to control headlines.

To see how the White House will attack John Kerry, look at its last great sales job: war on Iraq. For months, we were besieged with exaggerations, accusations, planted stories, and outright lies. No fib or rationalization was too ridiculous; once one was disproved three more would replace it. Eventually, the White House wore down public skepticism just enough that raw power could do the rest. If it all turned out to be a fraud, who cares? This is what ruthlessness looks like.

John Kerry has decades worth of votes and public statements from which this sort of malicious playbook can be stocked; the attacks have already begun. If Kerry and his supporters wring their hands and spend the next eight months answering every charge and talking nobly of public policy, they'll deserve to lose. John Kerry is no treat, but that's not the point. The sole issue this year is George Bush's attack on 300 million of us, his betrayal of what is best in America.

We'd better start acting, all of us, like no one government, let alone one politician who says he talks regularly with God, has the right to recklessly endanger our world and the lives of so many of its people. Get angry about it. You should be.

That goes triply for those of us with the privilege and responsibility of being able to participate directly in US elections. Vote, sure. And register 10 more people to vote, or 50 or 100, and then make sure they do it. If you're in a state where Bush won't win, send money or time or people or yourself somewhere that he might. Use your passion, your brains, the fact that THIS IS OUR COUNTRY. And our planet.

If you were defending yourself, your spouse, your loved ones, your kids from a life-threatening menace, you wouldn't engage in polite debate with the menace. You'd do what was necessary to make sure it could do no harm. That's Election 2004. Your job prospects are on the line. Your retirement. Your future health care. Your civil liberties. Your constitutional rights. Your kids' educations. Their kids' portion of the insane debts now being paid off to the hyperwealthy, assuming there's a natural world left to be poor in by the time these parasites finish any second term. And, beyond it all, it's your city or town increasingly likely to be targeted by some fanatic from some far side of the world who hates what your government did to murder his brethren or blaspheme his god.

What else is there? What other issues matter?

Act like you're in a war. Whether or not you want to be, you are. Every day you wake up, do something about it.

Defend yourself. You have until November.