Like you, we have many dreams and hopes for Ought-Three. We’d like to think no year could be more awful than Ought-Two, but the pro-war politicians keep promising otherwise.

Still, we must hope. Our first hope, natch, is that the purveyors of Armageddon Lite (in this and other countries) be thwarted from their dark dream. We’ve other dreams as well. In our ideal Ought-Three:

• The architects who design ugly, inhospitable office buildings would have to move their own offices into them, instead of hogging all the remaining funky old buildings for themselves.
• Some bigshot economist will realize you can’t maintain a national economy that depends on consumer spending if you systematically decimate the spending power of all non-zillionaires.
• Corporate de-consolidation will begin naturally, without the need for legislation, as unweildy conglomerates (particularly in the media) continue their steady march toward fiscal collapse.
• Indie films will cover topics other than the supposedly wacky lives of indie filmmakers.
• Kazaa and QuarkXPress finally come out for Mac OS X.
• Looney Tunes finally come out on DVD.
• Somebody figures out that if “freedom” is what makes this country distinguishable from the alleged bad guys, then our people should have more freedoms, not fewer.
• City Hall figures out that the answer to every problem is not necessarily a subsidized construction project.
• G.W. Bush finally doesn’t get something he wants. Like a war, for instance.