At 07:04 PM 10/16/96 -0700, you wrote:

Thus the glory days of cypherpunks, an insider club of the best and brightest, far superior to the common herd, where we planned and organized for a world where the ignorant masses can no longer rob and harass their superiors, a world where the elite can live the good life in freedom and comfort and abandon the useless worthless masses to wander blindly into ruin, despair, and slavery, lost in a world they cannot understand, and will no longer have the power to smash.

Why, James, this reads very much like Robert McNamara's best and brightest in the Nam glory days, cheerleading the B&B gang's gory battles slaughtering the worthless masses for vain comfort of the elite Pentagon planners. I presume you are not a savagely scarred vet, wrecked by over-heated ambition of the B&B elite, just another rightly ignored McNamara crybaby aged-Whiz Kid. Take R&R for a long while, you need it. Go to your nearest VA Hospital and wipe-up bed pans. Then come back to c'punks and earn your rank, not just flaunt the vanity plates.