Popular movements have accomplished incredible things over the centuries, and almost none (I'm hedging, I want to say there were none at all) of them were achieved by ticking a box on a voting form. The level of repression in the West today, while certainly not at its lowest point ever, is still lower than it's been for much of the past century.

It's easy to feel helpless and isolated, to feel like you can't do anything because the government is so big and you're so small. Realise that this feeling of helplessness is not based in reality. It is fostered; not by some kind of global conspiracy between government and business, but because it serves the interests of powerful people and institutions everywhere. There is no need for them to cooperate, for them to get together in shady backrooms to decide how next to disempower you. Their interests just happen to align.

But that isolation is not something you're forced into. You can break free. It's not easy, but if people suffering under military dictatorships can do it, then in our (still) relatively free society, we can do it too.

Anyone who feels like this should read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. I'm rereading it these days (relistening, actually), and while it's certainly not perfect, you'll get a lot out of the shift in viewpoint.