If you're creating something that has some sort of cultural currency - if the idea is getting out there - then that will probably yield money in some form, whether it's through selling art or selling books or being asked to give a lecture.

The social and political issues the world faces are bigger than a few leaders. I made a lot of work about corporate influence in government, which is a problem in both parties and under any president.

I want to be proud of this country [the USA], but when aspects of our policy don't align with my ethics, I want to protest them and try to change them. Being complicit because it's the home team is nationalism, not patriotism.

I think that what led largely to Trump's election was the manifestation of the too-common mindset that facts don't matter; in other words, "manifest destiny" - the truth will not penetrate the barriers of our ideology if the truth doesn't sit well with our predispositions.

I hate to say Americans are ignorant and lazy, but a lot of them are ignorant and lazy. It's just like what I was talking about with Rebel Music and art. When you live in a place that has a lot of good things that make life easier, it's easier to take them for granted. But what frustrates me to no end are people who want to blame Obama or blame anything that is something that if they were actually doing anything as simple as voting, it might not be as bad as it is.

Art making comes from the human desire to share something that is universal in one sense, but unique to your sensibility in another. I think that, wherever you are in the world, that impulse exists within human beings.

I think that the influence of people with power and money to distort democracy and have their interests served before the rest of the population is the biggest problem. That is caused by two things: campaign finance and the way that's structured, and by the Citizen's United supreme court decision. So those two things are keeping democracy from working right.