I've often thought that these are not heroic times in which to live. Political parties seems as if they are screaming "Less Filling" to one and "Tastes Great" to the other. The differences aren't substantive because there are few demons left to be slain. On the other hand, this is a pretty nice situation. It could be like Venezuela, where it seems like the liberating general is refusing to step aside like that noble Roman warrior-farmer. "It's grim, it's really grim," writes the author of the weblog Caracas Chronicles. What is even grimmer is that in these non-heroic times, the desire for perfect ethics trumps passion, and the New York Times doesn't want the author to write a weblog while being a correspondent of the Times.