It's difficult

to reach across the aisle when the width and position of the aisle are in dispute.

I'm in love with you

every time I look at your face or even remember it, it wrecks me

without responsibility

opportunity can be wasted or distorted; without opportunity all the responsibility in the world is meaningless. we need the ladders to climb, the courage and responsibility to climb them, and the support of others to help us on our way.

the immensely rapid advance

in the exploitation of American economic resources has meant throughout the history of the United States, despite recurrent crises, a prospect of very high profits for the successful business adventurer, and this prospect has bred in the American people a speculative temper of a kind that exists nowhere else in anything like the same degree.

this temper has contributed greatly to the instability of the American business system and has exaggerated its repercussions on the rest of the world.

grandma, I've been unruly

in my dreams
and with my speech
drill little holes into my eyelids
that I might see you
that I might see you when I sleep

the starting point

of progressive politics has always been the view that every voice, however powerless, however marginalised, sometimes however misguided, has the equal right to be heard. if equality starts anywhere, it must start here, from the grounding assumption that a nation is nothing but its people, a democracy is nothing but its citizens and that every voice counts the same, has an equal right to be heard.

sometimes the voice of the people can be uncomfortable, sometimes worse than that, but each of us has to make a profound choice: either we trust the people or we don't.