helder i agree with you on one point and it may surprise you which point it is the loosers of the cold war were indeed 'the people' now that the communist threat is gone it's no longer necessary to accommodate basic decency in dealing with employees for example i have worked on the bottom of the food chain long enough to know how many liberties some employers take with their employees the irony is of course that out of fear of communism working conditions in the west were much better than in communist countries i still think the masses are cowardly nasty stupid and disgusting in general but that's regardless of who they are made up of any assembly of people that exceed about a hundred people tends to take on disgusting behaviour just watch frat parties at 'elite' universities yuck you don't even need people for that humanity as such is vile it's only redeeming feature is the occasional decent human being my support for democracy is not based on any kind of sympathy with 'the masses' but it's simply based on the realization that there are no better alternatives i am a popperian democrat democracy as a necessity not moral imperative the losing side of any revolution is always humanity menschlichkeit not menschheit i trust you know enough german to get the difference the famines inflicted on india ireland and post wwi germany are just one of the few examples of how humans in general are simply disgusting by the way according to new findings in archeology genocide was the method of choice in dealing with enemies for most of human history whether the 'noble savages' the carriers of 'white man's burden' the 'ubermenschen' or the 'avantgarde of the proletariat' humans have not gotten better or worse throughout history but have simply found new excuses for their native instincts i think this discussion has gone severely off topic if you want to continue go to my talk page apologies to the rest of you