Yes I said yes we can Yes

Want to talk about conspiracies of entrenched power? I'll give you one: decades of work, and the money to pay for it, have been spent on pounding the idea into your fuzzy little heads that all politicians are sleazeballs, political action is hopeless, no one goes into a public service career for idealistic reasons, democracy isn't a thing to be proud of, and your vote doesn't matter.

Are you aware that most elections in the United States are decided by fairly narrow margins? I am amazed that an online population that's watched Flickr, Digg,YouTube, FaceBook, and Twitter grow up out of nothing can doubt its own potential political clout.

The powerlessness-and-despair trope is one of the two or three nastiest headtrips the bad guys run on you. And why do they do it? Precisely because it isn't true. Your votes do matter. Political action can change the world. Faith and hope aren't private vices. They're forces to be reckoned with.

- Teresa Nielsen Hayden, here.

And, what the hell, while we're at it, this is pretty much still true too; also, what he said.

You know what to do.