A headline this evening read, "Bay Area Responds to Saddam's Capture." I skipped it. "I can tell you precisely," thought I to myself, "What people-in-general will say." I'm not much of an elitist (am I?), but once you've read a few newspaper articles, the man-in-the-street interview doesn't yield any new spectrum of viewpoints.

Then I thought, "If you could really predict popular response to an event—if you really had your finger on the pulse of your people—you could win a political campaign, hands down." Despite knowing the pulse of the people, I immediately realized, I myself would not be able to win such a campagin, because electoral politics is all about knowing the difference between 51 and 49, whereas to me the two are very much the same.

But no! (I railed yet again at myself) This isn't what democracy means to me! Democracy is not about the 51 against the 49. It's about the colonists against the crown; it's about the slaves (and their allies) and the sharecroppers, against the masters and the landowners! It's about distributed online file-sharers against an oligarchic trust of media-owners. It's about individual artists, against content owners and homogenizing media forces! It's about the great many small business owners against the few officers of big-box stores! It's about the 89 and the 11, for <mild oath>, and that's what we're here for!

(Sorry, O readers, for the unprecedented sincerity above. The responsible parties have been lashed and we will return to our usual regimen of sarcasm and cynicism).