Opinion | Down About the Election? There Is a Speech I Want You to Read.

This is an extraordinary time full of vital, transformative movements that could not be foreseen. It’s also a nightmarish time. Full engagement requires the ability to perceive both.

At the heart of our divisions is almost half a century of rising inequality and declining social mobility. Americans tolerate more economic inequality than citizens of other modern democracies: if anyone can become anything, today’s unequal results are fair and might well change tomorrow. That was never completely true, but now it’s plainly false.

Churchill’s War Speeches, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,

How do we get back to the struggle over the future? I think you have to hope, and hope in this sense is not a prize or a gift, but something you earn through study, through resisting the ease of despair, and through digging tunnels, cutting windows, opening doors, or finding the people who do these things.