To find evidence of ordinary voters' past affiliations and past views, cyber sleuths trawl through social media and are encouraged to use tweets or Facebook messages against unsuspecting registered supporters who aren't toeing the party line.
We all know the incantations of fairy tales, the language writers invent to make the dead rise and the gods appear, to send ordinary people past the boundaries of the natural world.
Barack Obama has pushed ordinary citizens past the tipping point.
His family wept as ordinary Russians filed past, crossing themselves.
As they move, they seem to float slightly, as if, like ballet dancers, their momentum carried them past ordinary human ability.
These are a magnet for wealthy parents, whose offspring can be seen speeding past ordinary mortals on the pistes, resplendent in shiny salopettes and Ray-Bans.
In Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, the camera lingers lovingly on gleaming steel-and-glass tower blocks as clouds are speeded up in the sky to suggest nature in turmoil, while down below on the city streets crowds of ordinary mortals trudge past in portentous slow motion.
Shortly before thousands of ordinary Americans walked past Mr. Reagan's coffin in mournful tribute to a leader who proudly shared their humble roots, Mrs. Reagan was joined by members of her family and close friends in a brief service in the marble-walled rotunda of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
When the Icelandic director Gisli Orn Gardarsson needed music for his production of "Woyzeck," the 1837 play about an ordinary man pushed past his limits, he went to Nick Cave, known for a catalog of songs about murder, obsession and bad, bad love.
After past recessions, ordinary investors have typically regained their enthusiasm for stocks, hoping to profit as the economy recovered.
