AUSTIN, Texas -- Stephen Colbert, correspondent for “The Daily Show,” the only news program to watch during the Republican convention, found the theme of this convention like a homing pigeon: “Unmitigated gall.”

        This convention alone would be enough to convince me that John Edwards is right about “two Americas,” except I don’t think he’s gone far enough. These folks are in from another planet. They’re living in an alternative reality. When is a fact a fact to these people? When did anyone ever find evidence Saddam Hussein had dog to do with Sept. 11?

        It’s all very well to claim our invasion of Iraq may yet bring about peace and democracy in the Middle East -- hey, miracles happen -- but when Rudy Giuliani assured us this “idealism” is in fact triumphing as he speaks, one must question the man’s grip on sanity. Even the president is now claiming the disastrous occupation is the result of “catastrophic success.” That seems to mean he thinks we won the war too fast.

The Nationwide Arena doors opened at 1:00. There would be a four-hour wait before the prodigal son returned to his ancestral home, Columbus, Ohio.

Forget about Kennebunkport, Maine. That’s where George Herbert Walker of the St. Louis Walkers purchased a faux ancestral home. Ignore Connecticut. That’s simply where Prescott Bush went, after his prank letter on being a war hero was published in a hometown newspaper embarrassing the family out of the heartland. Here in Columbus is where it all started. Where the great-grandfather of our current President began the family’s well-documented tradition of war profiteering.

Samuel Bush, friend of the Rockefellers and owner of Buckeye Steel Castings, pulled his own “Halliburton” in World War I simultaneously serving on the Armaments Board and granting contracts to his family business. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church still stands on Broad Street near downtown as a monument to the good old days. The Bush family worshipped there before its new generations embraced evangelical right-wing Christianity.

"Happy is the country which requires no heroes," Bertolt Brecht commented. Today, by that standard, the United States is a very unhappy country.

These days, the public's genuine eagerness for heroes is difficult to gauge. If media output is any measure, the hero industry is engaged in massive overproduction. Whether the "products" are entertainers, star athletes or politicians, the PR efforts are unrelenting. Some brands catch on.

In mass culture, the media consumer is constantly encouraged to swoon for personalities who seem to turn glitz into a verb. From MTV to the mall multiplex, the role models are on the market, glorious in two dimensions.

Among politicians, heroism has become a holy grail. During his first months as president, George W. Bush -- a militarist without a military record to speak of -- could hardly qualify. On his resume, the only people he had killed were death row prisoners in Texas. But in the aftermath of 9/11, with the title of "wartime president" conferred on him, Bush made use of ample opportunities to sprinkle himself with heroic stardust, marinated in blood, from Afghanistan

Didn't John Kerry ever read about rope-a-dope? Karl Rove must be kicking his heels with merriment at the way the horse-faced son of Boston is tangling himself up in the Swift boat comedy. A couple of weeks more and I reckon Kerry will start crying on TV at the besmirchments of his war record, and it will all be over. Are there any skins thinner than those belonging to Democratic loyalists for Kerry? The other night, Jeffrey St. Clair, who coedits the political Website and newsletter CounterPunch with yours truly, found himself at a gathering of antiwar activists in downtown Portland, touting our new book, "A Dime's Worth of Difference, Beyond The Lesser of Two Evils."

        There were about a hundred souls assembled, and Jeffrey's seasoned eye assayed the political temper of the throng. Sure enough, at least a score had that fixity of gaze and tensed naso-labial musculature that betrayed the presence of Zombies-for-Kerry.