What's the point of being better than someone else?

A lot of people who voted for Trump, working class people, voted for Obama in 2008. They were seduced by the slogans "hope" and "change." They didn't get hope, they didn't get change, they were disillusioned. This time they voted for another candidate who is calling for hope and change and has promised to deliver all kinds of amazing things.

Unless that happens, unless you get, you know, kind of integration of activists' concerns and movements, it will be, each one will be 'preaching to the choir'.

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.

Civil disobedience's main goal typically is to try to arouse and inspire others to join and do something. Well, sometimes that is a good tactic, sometimes not.

There is either a crisis or a return to the norm of stagnation. One view is the norm is stagnation and occasionally you get out of it. The other is that the norm is growth and occasionally you can get into stagnation. You can debate that but it's a period of close to global stagnation.

My own feeling is that one should refuse to participate in any activity that implements American aggression - thus tax refusal, draft refusal, avoidance of work that can be used by the agencies of militarism and repression, all seem to me essential.