Courage.

Editor,

In the 1930's, after Wall Street crashed the economy, helpless souls experienced vicarious comeuppance by cheering on John Dillinger and other bank robbers.

In France after the Nazi occupation, humiliated souls exaggerated the exploits of the Resistance in movies like "La Bataille du Rail."

Today, crushed under the jack boots of capitalists run wild, the 99% hope a few hackers who will inevitably be chased down by goons working for the 1% will crash the system and eject the robbers from the catbird seat.

It's a nice fantasy, going up against insurmountable odds like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In our case, fortunately, none of the flawed and goofy resisters we're cheering for gets killed, which is a good thing. The ultimate lesson, though, is -- soothing as the fantasy is -- a few soldiers of liberation can't do the job for an entire population.

It takes an uprising, which -- when the other side has all the money, heavily armed police, and can delete your posts on the NY Times website with a mouse click -- takes sustained, concerted effort and in some cases more courage than a lot of us can muster.

Re: "Hacker, Informant and Party Boy of the Projects" (3/9/2012)