i'll tell you why the obama admin is shitting bricks right at this moment. they were hoping to preserve the whole damn thing - the military and intelligence establishments, the basic control of the population - minus mubarak, as politicians the world over like to believe that swapping symbols or shifting rhetoric or something actually is a transformation. they're confused as between change and 'change.' really, that's the basic political delusion: yapping will make it so, or words and pictures are the only real things, or symbolic action is the realest action. this is precisely the sort of moment - when people are doing more than making good television commercials - that shows the limits of this bizarre delusion. they fantasize that you can just re-narrate the world or change everything with a better logo or something, or that there is nothing outside the text. this is a very this-era belief, our characteristic delusion: it's the essence of barack obama's approach, e.g. well, it breaks down everywhere allthetime. but sometimes you have to become aware of it, you get bitchslapped by concrete actualities. these folks will not be satisfied with a re-adjustment of the symbols or telling a different story. this must really bum out the pr machines that run the world. getting beaten by thugs: that'll teach you real quick that we are not the stories we tell.