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Last week I went to the dental clinic and accidentally left my water bottle there. The office called me up and told me they had my water bottle and I could come and get it.

When I called back to find out where I should go once I got there, I got a taped message: "Please press 1 for English, dos para espanol." After I pressed 1, I got a menu of numbers to press, none of them for the dental clinic. So I tried waiting for the operator and I just kept getting the menu again. I pressed a button and got a nurse's voicemail.

I called back. I tried appointments. They had a number for dental emergencies. I pressed that. I got a recorded message that the clinic was closed (at 11 a.m. on a non-holiday weekday?). I called back again and tried another number. I finally got through to a person who answered my question right away.

This experience left me feeling that our lives these days have dissolved into robot-voiced bureaucracies. It also reminded me of how I feel about my affect on the world as a whole.

We live in a democracy, or so they say. In a democracy, people are supposedly running the government. But what happens when you disagree with what the government is doing? You can vote to express your opinion, but that only happens once a year in general, once every two years for U.S. representatives, once every four years for president and once every six years for senator. So if your representative does something you don't like, you can vote him out of office in an even-numbered November.

Harry Truman, in his wisdom, chose to recognize and support Israel when this was an unpopular decision. Truman realized that Israel would be an invaluable ally for the U.S. And Israel continues to be such an ally. Israel more than makes up for the American aid they get with intelligence information. Israel is also a fitting home for overseas branches of hi-tech companies like AT&T, Microsoft, and Apple.

But I see the current administration pulling away from that alliance. Mr. Obama seems to feel that the U.S. should hitch its star to the Arab nations. The Arab nations smile to Mr. Obama's face while behind his back in Arabic they continue to blast the U.S., to blame the U.S. and Israel for all the world's ills. So why do we court the Arabs when working with Israel is in America's best interest?

In a reality where the average person doesn't have the ear of leaders, in a reality where people can feel like they're sitting in the back of a huge auditorium trying to get the lecture professor to see them before the hour is up, I feel impotent; I feel vulnerable.

What's the answer? I wish I knew. But I see others who feel as I do organizing groups to influence the politicos -- groups designed to give us a stronger voice, groups like Brigitte Gabriel's "Act for America" group. I support the work she's doing and I support the work others like her are doing to alert the world to the growing problem of Islamist conquest.

The Islamists aren't conquering with armies and generals; they are conquering with propaganda, lies, and intimidation. They are slowly, but surely, winning the war of attrition throughout Europe, the war of births, the war of words, the war of terror. And all over the world, people are sitting back in their chairs and letting this happen.

I don't know how to stop this. Many believe that Europe is already lost. I hope they're wrong. I see a glimmer of hope in France and Germany, their current leaders supportive of Israel, desiring to maintain the freedom for their citizens, freedom from Islamist coercion. But there is still more work for the future.

We can't be complacent here either. There are many communities where Islamists are gaining footholds in the U.S., too. As they did in Lebanon and as they're doing in Europe, they can do here. Too many people don't see the danger. And if we don't fight this, we'll be philosophically and politically bulldozed.

Fight our enemy now while we can still defeat them and their hateful ideology. Tomorrow will be too late.

Debbie Israel is a graphic artist (see https://www.cafepress.com/compugraphd2 for some of her work) and tutor living in Highland Park.