Sublime

There was again no open opposition, nothing that Moses’ supporters could seize on as evidence of Tammany opposition to reform; instead, there was again stalling and obfuscation and confusion—and, for Bob Moses, defeat.

Democratic institutions awaken and foster a passion for equality which they can never entirely satisfy.

Schneider and Sagan (2005) argue that complex nonequilibriumthermodynamic systems—societies, political systems, ecosystems, and economies—share a universal feature; they regress to earlier, more hierarchical, less complex and less open forms of organization under conditions of environmental stress such as plagues, wars and depressions. This

I think the scale of clandestine government activities is a pretty good measure of the popular dissidence and activism in a country—and clandestine activities shot way up during the Reagan period. That tells you something right there about popular “empowerment”: it’s a reflection of people’s power that the government was forced underground. That’s

qualquer dimensão da política está ligada à existência real ou à possibilidade da emergência de inúmeras formas de interação e de disputa entre indivíduos ou grupos

Parties with more alternatives and lower needs have the most power.

Sensing that the price of failure is permanent marginalization, partisans on each side are girding for a crisis in which they are ready to break any guardrails to prevail. Everything is now on the table: gerrymandering, tilting election rules, subpoenas, impeachments, nuking the filibuster, packing the Supreme Court, and—in extremis—mobilizing mobs