Spinning Hurricane Isabel: the ideological significance of fallen trees.

• Author: Bergo, Sandy
• Position: 10 Miles Square

On a beautiful fall morning, not long after I Hurricane Isabel blew through the Washington area, a shuttle bus trundled down a street in suburban Maryland where most residents had been without electricity for several days running. Inside the bus, a man and a woman, seated apart but joined by ideology, complained bitterly about the continued power outages, which they attributed to incompetence and corruption on the part of local Republicans.

If he were governor of Maryland, the man said--instead of the Republican who is, Bob Ehrlich--he'd give Pepco, the local utility, 24 hours to get power restored, or take over and do it himself. The woman agreed, but said President Bush was also to blame, for caring more about spending billions to rebuild Iraq than needs here at home. Bush is more interested in invading countries, she said, and killing people. The Republicans were "incompetent" and "idiots," they loudly agreed.

Thus provoked, a man sitting directly across from the woman joined the debate with an opposing view. "You can find idiots anywhere," he muttered. "Even riding a bus."

This, the woman responded, was precisely the kind of thing she expected to hear from "the right wing."

The second man told her to just shut up. She declined, citing her "First Amendment rights" and inclination to exercise them.

Her interlocutor was not convinced, insisting that she did not have the right to offend a bus filled with people, and that there were better ways to express her opinion.

"How?" she wondered aloud.

"Politely, and quietly," he responded.

Her answer, laced with mildly foul language, was that politeness will get you nowhere.

At this point, the argument took an uglier turn. The man, identifying himself as Irish American, told the woman, who herself spoke with an Irish accent, that he was "ashamed" to share...