Feeling the call of revolution put me in mind to re-read a classic on the subject: Robert Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. One passage has struck me as being particularly cogent, given our present circumstances:

"Followed a long time during which would have been possible to forget anything as unlikely as revolution had not details taken so much time. Our first purpose was not to be noticed. Long distance purpose was to make things as much worse as possible.

Yes, worse. Never was a time, even at last, when all Loonies wanted to throw off Authority, wanted it bad enough to revolt. All Loonies despised Warden and cheated Authority. Didn't mean they were ready to fight and die. ...We were as non-political a people as history ever produced. I know, I was as numb to politics as any until circumstances pitched me into it."

Yesterday I prophesied this: "If you have enough money to be one of the people Bush calls "his base," you'll get the inevitable reconstruction contracts and tax breaks once those poor blacks are all out of the way in Louisiana."

Today I read this on forbes.com: Halliburton Subsidiary Gets Katrina Deal.

BushCo couldn't respond in time to save thousands of lives, yet they planned in advance to give the millions of dollars in "natural disaster" reconstruction contracts to themselves. How convenient then, that Bush cut or denied annual funding to fix the levees in New Orleans repeatedly, with each year worse for hurricanes than the prior.

Circumstances, my friends, have pitched us into it.