It is official: Lebanon is now made of two separate and distinct republics: a Sunni republic versus a Shi`ite republic, and each republic enjoys an outside regional and international patron. The Christians and Druzes are mere bystanders. Young people of both republics are eager for civil war: some of the demonstrators in the Hariri festival yesterday actually chanted "civil war." Hariri MP, Basim As-Sab` (who is blessed with the charisma of a chair) borrowed the words of Al-Hajjaj bin Yusuf about "the ripe heads that need to be picked"--this was part of the democratic discourse of the "democratic" movement. Demonstrators of the Lebanese Forces carried models of gallows. And thugs of the Lebanese Forces clashed with thugs of Jumblat militia. (Secularists are not permitted in the potato homeland). Watching the news in Lebanon these days inoculate you against nostalgia for the homeland that should never have been.