@Eric, I tried emigration. I recommend that everyone who can, try living overseas and seeing what “we” look like from abroad. The rest of the world can see our glaring hypocrisy so clearly (plus you’ll fall in love with A4 paper and in most other countries, a saner health care system).

Acting out of despair and powerlessness doesn’t feel good to me. But ACTing is the key and maybe it’s OK if we each have our own reasons.

as the laws in favour of these money-rustlers increase, there will only be fewer and fewer of them until there is only those select two or three. isn’t this why we wanted a true democracy in the first place?

Would that the social media / network technologies being used to mine our personal information were turned on the movement of money in the political process. It seems the only way to prevent the abusive influence from escalating is radical financial transparency.

At what point does despair and powerlessness drive us to emigrate?

Also: I liked the narrative on the intro and closing, Steve.

Your story was well done, and a pleasure to read. You will get no argument from me that the republicans aren’t a disgrace. They are, and I by no means meant to suggest that you were making things up.
Working in Manhattan, I have been interrupted many times by Obama’s trips downtown to kiss Goldman’s ass, so it just frustrated me that he was seemingly getting a pass. I’m quite sure if you google top donors to Obama, Goldman is right there at the top, and the crony capitalism and cabinet appointments continue to roll on. Its this messy, antiquated two party system that, to me anyway, is the big problem.

Power and greed take over and we, the people, get shafted. Sometimes I wish I was an ostrich, but I’m not able to stand still long enough!

As always, love your work.