We didn’t need to be patient. We didn’t effectively use the nonviolent tools are our disposal. They were too boring.

I disagree… change takes time. We’ve made tremendous incremental progress over the past 50-60 years. But it takes time to change laws and even longer to change cultures. Nonviolent protest and similar actions are useful and effective at building communities and cohesion, but less so at effecting change. For effective, long-lasting change we need to educate and advocate, which means engaging in the political process. I don’t know what magical “nonviolent tools” are at our disposal that can turn things around now a time frame that matters to us.

In the last 10 years or so we’ve been steam-rolled over by neoliberal and neoconservative forces bankrolled by the wealthy. The sophistication of this effort and the mechanisms employed are incredibly hard to oppose. You need only witness the recalcitrance of the Dems to shift toward even the most basic progressive goals.

Before the recent election I was advocating hard for Harris not because I don’t consider her essentially a neocon but because the alternative is going to be horrible. Pretty weak, I acknowledge. I also made similar statements as you with regard to not voting for her, even while I shared the feelings of betrayal, simply because it was so clear how much harder any progress was going to be under Trump.

We’re faced with an administration that will set us back decades on every front imaginable. We have 4 years or less to do everything we can to ensure that at a minimum we get to vote them out in 2028 and that the damage is as contained as possible. This isn’t the time for slow incremental change. This is the time to put politicians and the wealthy on notice and make sure they understand the consequences of engaging in even deeper fleecing of the American public.

That doesn’t mean we don’t do the hard, boring work of winning elections and engaging in the political process. To me it just means that isn’t enough right now. It probably won’t be enough for a long time to come. This is going to be a hard fight.