You know it's funny; I sort of used to be that person.
I read the Nation every month, laughed sincerely with every Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon. I went to every Michael Moore movie punctually the day after opening weekend (I never liked crowds). I listened to Air America from the literal first day they started broadcasting in my town, watched the Rachel Maddow show religiously. I marched against the Iraq War in 2003, cried when Kerry lost in 2004, and I've never used a drug in my life which felt like seeing Obama elected in 2008. My senior superlative? Most politically active. True. Fucking. Story.
You know what changed?
I woke up.
The world today is a mess, and every time I wrote the DNC a check or marched for some Social Justice cause or kicked someone under the table for talking during a day of silence I was doing my part to make that mess worse. So I stopped. It's that easy.
I think you could stop too, if you wanted to. I don't expect it, but please just look around and ask yourself honestly if we can really keep going the way we have.
People want to tell everything instead of telling the best 15 words. They want to learn everything instead of the best 15 words. In this thread, instead post the best 15-words from a book you've read recently (or anything else). It has to stand on its own. It's not a summary, the whole value needs to be contained in those words.
I'll start in the comments below.
(Voted by the Schelling study group as the best exercise of the meeting.)