From the beginning, this writer has tried hard to befriend and find common ground with Charles Nash. His June 19 column only points up how abysmally I've failed.

The historical record shows incontrovertibly that Nevada has always staunchly supported Cottey College. Still, the legended divide between "town and gown" seems to apply here just as at old Oxford. The difference being, at Oxford it was the students who brought the town misunderstanding. Here, it seems to be one of its faculty.

In all my years of trying, I've known but one Cottey instructor who might willingly have called himself a Yahoo, not a Laputan.

Being an English prof, Charles will understand the allusion to "Gulliver's Travels." But for the benefit of my fellow Yahoos I note that in Swift's satirical masterpiece, Laputa is a floating-in-the-air island whose denizens live heads-in-the-clouds, occupying themselves wholly with abstractions and hopelessly impractical projects.

The Yahoos, in contrast, are a race of ordinary if rather brutish men, subject to a race of intellectual horses, the Houyhnhnms.

Something about Academe turns people into Laputans. From their well-known ivory towers they look down in disdain on us brutish Yahoos. We Yahoos can't help hitting back with like disdain, resentment, and perhaps even a bit of pity.

Recently I urged Shannon Harwell to come out of the woodwork of the written word and experience the world as it is. The advice is even more apt for Laputans.

Charles's nose is out of joint because there are more Yahoos, and Yahoodom being a republic, they elected one of their own president. Indeed, they usually do. Didn't John Kerry come across as a bit of a Laputan? I'd rather have a Yahoo for president than a Laputan. "Intellectuals" have done the world more harm than amiable dullards.

Charles's screed against President Bush is exceeded only by that diatribe emitted by the esteemed Dr. Goldberger, just before he shook our Yahooian dust from his feet.

I'm amazed and depressed that "professional" and therefore presumably "educated" men can screw themselves up to such disrespectful and dopey hijinks. Charles has less of an excuse, since he's lived in (or rather above) Yahoodom for a long time now, and ought to have adjusted, perhaps even gained understanding, if only by friction or osmosis.

There have been many presidents I didn't like. I don't think I've ever tried to assassinate their character as Charles has done George W. Bush.

He likens him to Grant and Harding as "dangerously incompetent" chief executives the country had patiently to "wait out." But the Grant and Harding presidencies were noted mainly for "graft and corruption." There's always some of those in politics; but I know of no egregious "graft and corruption" to surface in five years of George W. Bush.

Personally George comes across as a breath of fresh air after Bill Clinton, presumed hero of the Laputans. George, to my knowledge, hasn't engaged in misdeeds with any interns, and then committed perjury about it. And there was "graft and corruption" aplenty in those dozens of last minute pardons Clinton granted.

Charles didn't like Nixon either, whom his fellow Laputans hounded from office over a trifle, enabling a run-amuck Congress to decree "no more aid for South Vietnam," thereby giving the Reds an engraved invitation, and setting tens of thousands of boat people adrift.

Unable truly to damn George for his character, Charles damns him for his policies.

But, Charles, these are policies supported by the majority of Americans, the Yahoos (a.k.a. red staters) who elected George and gave him a sympathetic Congress.

Charles tells us at length how bad things are in Iraq. There's an old saying from a 1930s radio show: "Vas you dere, Charlie?"

Nearly every war in American history has had its mouthy opponents, even the Revolution itself. New England flirted with secession over the War of 1812 and the Mexican War.

If Vietnam-like antiwar riots are in our offing over Iraq, I suppose Charles will rejoice and crow "I told you so!" As I recall, it was the Laputans who perpetrated the Vietnam antiwar gig.

I remember that as a dark day in our history, because, not of the war, but of the antiwar. We could have won that blooming war in three weeks if we'd really fought it. But Laputans, or would-be Laputans, were calling the shots. (Read Hersch's "The Dark Side of Camelot" and Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson.) Domestically: "He's trying to slash the budget of public radio and television." Good! Haven't we had enough of their leftwing bilge? It wouldn't be a bit surprising if Charles's caricature of George personally waylays old ladies and orphans and sends the pickings to Donald Trump. Surely we're beyond this kind of asinine class warfare, Charles.

The environment: "What does the government plan? Well, nothing!" Good, again! More "government plans" we need like holes in the head. Human problems cannot be solved, only rearranged. Every "solution" creates new, usually worse problems.

Kyoto, it would seem, was a sop to the bleeding-hearts who wield undue influence in most developed countries, a logical outgrowth of their personal Laputan guilt-complexes. It was stacked in favor of the "developing" countries and against our own.

And as for Charles's concluding lament that the world's coming to an end, one way or another, all on account of George Bush's sins of commission and omission: The world has been coming to an end ever since it began. An ancient Sumerian cuneiform tablet lists all the things wrong and sums up: "It is obvious that the end of the world is at hand." It seems equally obvious to you, Charles, and the other Laputans. First it was "global cooling" (nuclear winter), then "global warming."

The environmentalists have cried wolf too many times. Down here on Mother Earth, among us Yahoos, things wear a more optimistic aspect. The world seems a pretty durable, if ever-messy place. Experience it at first hand and you'll likely acquire a faith that it'll last a good long while yet.