I was drinking with a couple of friends, watching the Presidential Debate on Tuesday night, and wondering if anything really interesting would happen. All I got was a couple of petulant boomers waxing teenager-ish about "fuzzy math" and elderly women picking up aluminum cans to buy her life-continuing drugs. I wondered if G.W. Bush had been one of those kids who was generously passed on from grade to grade by doing macaroni pictures for his teachers or if there's a difference between a homeless guy on the street picking up aluminum cans for his "fix" of Southern Comfort and the same old lady Gore keeps holding up like a sacrificial lamb.

There has to be more to being a president than coming up with a fantastically unrealistic budget (everyone knows that hardly any of this crap they keep talking about will actually come to pass anytime soon, right?) and then stomping around like a kid who needs a good dose of ritalin when someone points out the shortcomings and inconsistencies--doesn't there?

Which is why I was so happy that the people of Serbia not only voted out the evil, evil (you watch TV, right?) Slobodan Milosevic but also stormed the government building when the self-righteous president dismissed their votes with a wave of his arrogant hand.

In this country, a demonstration like that is unheard of. We cringe in fear when hundreds of thousands of kids get all nuts from dehydration and date raping to set fire to an abandoned air force base in the name of--is it even rock music anymore? We implore everyone to calm down and buy a non-Ford S.U.V. when defective tires disintegrate in the heat of summer and kill unsuspecting passengers. But we don't storm Washington D.C. because we don't trust the government anymore.

We write letters to the editor, get on public access TV or sit around coffee shops heavily-caffeinated air, close our eyes and sway to the girl with her guitar singing songs of love. We are almost apolitical when it comes to politics. It's not a nice exchange of issues and ideas, it's believe me or believe the other liar. So we don't believe in anything, we just wear our buttons and badges and consider ourselves "properly vetted" on the issues.

The people of Serbia backed up their votes with manpower. They shut the country down--with much better results than U.S. (I mean NATO) air strikes have done in the past.

Will supporters of Gore or Bush do the same after what will probably be a very close election (both in total vote and electoral vote)? I don't think so. It's enough of a challenge to get people in the U.S. to just vote--not to mention getting them away from their TV sets long enough to demonstrate in the streets.

Of course, we're in a very non-confrontational time. We've created an American Dream that encourages people to build personal prisons. Gated communities, tank-like trucks disguised as cars on steroids, iron bars on the windows, alarms and video cameras on the cars, doors, sidewalks and streetlights. Don't trust the neighbors, don't trust the teachers, don't trust anyone but the government who might throw you a tax cut bone if you fit into the tightly-regimented routine called "normal citizen."

This makes us feel secure--all these things that cut us off from the other normal citizens. We want bigger pipes for more connectivity, but don't let the kids go to the park because we don't know what those other kids are doing--and what they might do to our kids if we let them. We love our stuff more than we love our fellow man, because we paid for our stuff (or at least signed the credit card slip) so it's OURS.

And we watch the revolution in Serbia like it's the hip new game show. What's a three letter word for "idealistic correction?" Another nation inching its way into the big time consumer game. Another emerging market we can throw our disposable culture at in an attempt to make everyone look like us. Whoever we are.

I don't think the revolution in Serbia will make everything better for the people there. It might give them a better chance at normal life if sanctions are lifted (so far, none have been, even as leaders around Europe crowd around the bandwagon to offer support), but the people will have to work together the same way they came together to throw out old Slobodan (did this guy get teased in school because of his name, or what?). It will take a lot of work and they shouldn't think we're behind them on this.

Because we're not behind anyone but ourselves. We're still trying to figure out this whole Internet revolution, and whether or not it just means we won't have to leave the house for anything. The lower class becomes a national fleet of delivery boys, while the middle class becomes glassy-eyed in the glow of the whole wide world available through all the wires plugged into their sealed fortresses.

And that one percent of controlling wealth continues to laugh, thinking to themselves, "wow, we created a drug much better than crack." Because the belief that things are better and that we're all happy is much more powerful than any kind of personal enlightenment or mass uprising. Especially when you can order a pizza and cokes with the click of a button.

Matt Worley doesn't believe the hype.