What's a citizen to do?

There are so many problems, so many potential disasters and so many dire warnings of imminent danger these days that the only response most of us can offer is worry.

The concern I have is that most will have nothing left to do but follow the leader and concentrate on the things we can resolve: the need to buy more orange juice on the way home, the need to drive around that discarded tire on the street outside the subdivision, the need to pick up that broken limb from last week's wind storm that's still in the front yard. These are the things I'm generally good at, dealing with the small, worrisome events in my life over which there can be some rational control, some logic in handling in a forthright manner before they become more pressing or harmful.

While I'm writing insignificant lamentations on the powerless lives we common folk lead, the former governor of Texas is preparing his future remarks in a televised address to the nation, which even we columnists of limited cognition are pretty certain will contain renewed warnings about Saddam Hussein, the potential threats posed by both the manufacture and delivery of an Iraqi nuclear bomb, and the need for eternal vigilance against those dirty terrorists unleashed on the world by Osama bin Laden.

Today's worries seem so far removed from the realities of most of our lives that we even have trouble remembering some of the all-time favorite concerns of yesteryear.

Remember when chronic worriers held their breath for weeks on end just waiting for Bill and/or Hillary to drop another shoe and create one more domestic crisis creating instant salivation among the Republicans and severe chest pains among Democrats? Can you remember when we actually thought we could worry our kids into being better students and learn how to express themselves beyond the single "duh" word that is so popular these days?

The other day a few of us who covered the integration of the University of Mississippi at Oxford and then found our own lives in jeopardy celebrated the 40th anniversary of that worrisome event. After four decades, I think it's safe to stop worrying about any absence of African-American students at Ole Miss, particularly since several of them contribute a great deal to the ability of the football team.

I recall worrying each day as the Dow-Jones average climbed higher and higher, fearing that some glitch in Washington or Toyko or London might send the whole bale crashing down around the economy's head, but as I worried more about the event than the means, along came the corporate officials of Enron to spread the example that far too many corporations in America were cheating their stockholders and investors than even our gravest fears could imagine. As usual, we were worrying about the wrong problem, while failing to anticipate the one that really required attention.

Now we are being told by important personages, including our vice president, that unless we support his boss's decision to attack and invade Iraq, we are guilty of nothing less than treachery against America. Somehow I can't imagine that Missouri's John Danforth, had he been named vice president instead of Cheney, would ever have been guilty of such an insinuation. And somehow it is difficult for at least a few of us chronic practitioners to worry that by invading a Muslim nation without support either from our mutual defense organizations or the neighbors, that even more problems will arise, whether or not the Bush II plan is hailed early on as a resounding success.

Few of us should worry that armed U.S. troops will prove inadequate to overcome a relatively small band of Iraqi defenders who will meet them at the shoreline. The U.S. has the finest fighting machine in the history of mankind, the best armed armada ever placed in the hands of brave soldiers, and we will prevail against all odds.

What worries thoughtful Americans is the after-effect of the president's military operations: the loss of confidence in the American system of government and the credentials offered by our Bill of Rights that have served as models for democratic governments all over the world. We have already experienced the first signs of this world disillusioned in the Great American Model while occupying and stabilizing Afghanistan, where we still have an unfulfilled obligation to restore the damage caused by our chase of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. Our cordial hosts in that Godforsaken country expect us to live up to our word of restoration for their war-torn nation, and we forget it at the risk of losing a needed and valuable ally sometime in the future.

I worry, too, that we will forget those we promised to remember when we inaugurated a new president who pledged his best efforts to restoring confidence in the American future, with bold, new programs for education, health plans for the millions who lack such protection, greater citizen trust in the ability of our government to meet the needs of all of its people, and expanded confidence in the free enterprise system which we are assured is the envy of the whole world.

And perhaps I worry the most about the loss of individual freedom that we are told must come during times of emergencies, with promises these rights will be restored at the earliest possible moment. Now I worry there may not be a possible moment for a long time to come, if ever.

Between worries, I console myself with the thought that the human condition is not a spectator sport. Which helps explain why at the very moment, my greatest worry is about that dilapidated tire in the middle of the street.

That, and the realization that I have arrived home without the orange juice.

Jack Stapleton is the editor of Missouri News & Editorial Service.