That's partly why what happened in Seattle appeared so odd and dream-like -- because it had seemed like we were doing such a good job of navigating late capitalism's contradictions.

But what contradictions!

* The poor nations, which tend usually to oppose free trade, were now defending free trade because it protected their right to use oppressive labor practices; the protesters, who, classically, are on the side of poor nations against the resource-consuming rich, were eager to impose sanctions on the poor.

* While the culinary, retail, and otherwise economic might of the U.S. was taking it severely on the chin, policy-wise the U.S. government seemed to stand, in some oddly truculent fashion, on the side of the protesters.

* Although the WTO represented evil incarnate, the problem, many of the protesters seemed to be saying, was not that the WTO was too strong but that it was too weak.

* Anti-Nike protesters wore Nikes.

* The anti-technology forces were organized through the Internet.

* The happiest, mellowest city on the planet (so they say) was awash in tear gas.

The difficulty in figuring out just what was at issue in Seattle, or just who exactly the villains were, suggests not that there are no real issues but that the real issue is very likely a larger unhappiness, or restlessness, or reflexive itch to oppose and overthrow. The countervailing force may be quiescent, but it never goes away. It always reemerges. Always. We just don't know yet if this is it.

Although protest surely seems in the air.

It feels European. it makes a clichéd sort of sense that if capitalism is to be opposed once again, it will be opposed by a European-inspired movement.

The French, of course, are ecstatic.

Let me claim invention of another sobriquet: The Roquefort Revolution (roquefortrevolution.com isn't taken yet).

It is, as perhaps we cyclically ought to have expected, time for the revenge of the intellectuals. After all, how likely was it that an instinctively suspicious world would just shrug off this decade of technological upheaval?

Spokesmen for the digital revolution and global capitalism often say, as though to reassure, that what technology has wrought is so large that it will change everything in our lives. Indeed, if you just lie back, technology and the global economic order will make you happier than you ever dreamed possible, they say.

Imagine how that makes the French feel.

The last few times I have been in Europe, the Europeans of my acquaintance have nattered on about this Frankenfood issue. Oh, please, I've thought. How could their logic, not to mention scientific assumptions, diverge so dramatically from ours?