Personal change, political change, and why the orangutan sleeps tonight.

When you've been in the principled position of political opposition for 35 years, having realized long ago that the problem isn't so much Republican or Democrat, but America's non-thinking, two-party dysfunction itself, then election results so disappointing to others are like water off a duck's back.

Floyd County hands its Democrats a purely epic, top-to-bottom beat down.

Here's an essay from a few years back. I like it because of this impeccable conclusion:

We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.

Exactly.

Forget Shorter Showers; Why personal change does not equal political change, by Derrick Jensen (Orion)

WOULD ANY SANE PERSON think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?

Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance.