Kuala Lampur, Aug. 6 -- I've been walking around disoriented these past days. Mostly in traipses to rid persistent cliches chucked into conversations online and in-person about the Negeri Sembilan election, which ostensibly rolls into Johor before landing flat in last year's Sabah polls.

Al, a very old friend from a far more innocent time, told me that perhaps I assume too much about what people need.

People by large are perfectly comfortable in the equations they hold even if those suppositions do not pass muster under scrutiny.

Which was a clarion call. I had to break it down to the basics.

It's not that the "self-declared" progressives lost so comprehensively the past month.

It was the air of inevitability leading to the result. T...