The Cynic felt that way once, and he would like to feel that way again. Instead, all he hears is a dozen clocks ticking, ticking down against the survival of things long thought undying, against the golden dream of an orderly progress toward genuine human liberty. The Cynic cannot find much stubborn righteousness in himself anymore, so he warms himself like a hobo in a train yard, huddling around figures of the past, and around those figures of the present moment who seem to have preserved the warmth of that hope against the long, cold winds that seek always to extinguish it.

The Cynic and the Two Nations, by Charlie Pierce: It's been twenty years since then–state senator Obama assured us there was not a liberal America and a conservative America. In that time, a new country has been building with fearful momentum. Can anything be done to stop it?

Obama's keynote address at the 2004 DNC [transcript], which was covered previously (and presciently) on MeFi See also: 10 years since Obama's 2008 Iowa caucus win Other essays in Pierce's long-running, elegiac series on the moral and political arc of the last two decades, as bent around Barack Obama:

The Cynic and Senator Obama [June 2008] - Obama says that cynics believe they are smarter than everyone else. The cynic thinks he's wrong. The cynic doesn't think he's wiser or more clever or more politically attuned than anyone else. It's just that he fears that, every morning, he'll discover that his country has done something to deface itself further, that something else he thought solid will tremble and quake and fall to ruin, that his fellow citizens will sell more of their birthright for some silver that they can forge into shackles. He has come to believe that the worst thing a citizen of the United States of America can believe is that his country will not do something simply because it's wrong. The Cynic and President Obama [November 2012] - Perhaps all our best presidents are the ambiguous ones, the ones hardest to figure out, because they force us to take more of the obligations of citizenship on ourselves, and not to look for some Great Man to lead us. [...] Of all the possible presidents in 2012, Barack Obama was the best of them. But that wasn't the point anymore. The country needed more than a president. The country always had needed more than a president. For Obama, the Clock's Running in His Own Head Now [November 2012] - If he loses, there will be a powerful movement to render him, and these rallies, as footnotes. If he wins, he will be president again, and it will be a dusty, grinding job for as long as the calendar allows him to do it. [...] Ever since he came upon the scene, he has been a candidate who has had to rein himself in, someone who could sing Al Green, but just a line, someone who can dance, in front of an adoring crowd, but just one step, and then gone again. On the press riser, his senior staff was watching him do it, and they all smiled, and the sunset fell across their faces. The Greatness of Barack Obama Is Our Great Project [November 2012] - The long creative project of America has been to engage all its citizens in that work. That is the history that he wears so well, and that he wields so subtly. That is the truth that he represents. That is the great silent thing that has been there through all the debates, and the ads, and all of that preposterous money. We are working on ourselves. We are incomplete. We are never finished. The Cynic and the Lame Duck President [January 2015] - There's one thing about the president that took the cynic a long time to understand, and he didn't truly understand it until he heard the president refer to "the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government." Put simply, in so many areas, the president is putting the responsibility of governing—of leadership—on us, which is where it should be. We shouldn't need a president to start a conversation on race. We should start it ourselves, in thousands of town halls and church basements and radio talk shows. But as a self-governing democracy, we are too cowardly to do it honestly, because it rubs up against the comfortable myth of American exceptionalism. We have surrendered the basic, questioning courage it takes to run a self-governing political commonwealth for the anesthetic lassitude of national self-esteem. That is the bluff this president has called.

Charlie Pierce's masterful political commentary, previously [Speaking of history, one person of particular note was at Obama's 2007 campaign announcement, and soon got to work organizing exactly the same sort of grassroots phonebanks (or these days, Zoom calls) that are now lighting up Democratic politics on her behalf today -- support that the Obamas have now gladly repaid.]

What if in addition to a traditional "Get Out the Vote" campaign, your work also created a stronger community? What if you could turn a bunch of stolen corrugated signs into a block party? In "How to Build a New World Locally", organizer Madeline Talbott describes a strategy of using dedicated volunteer precinct captains to GOTV for progressive candidates in Chicago. She provides an optimistic path for fighting fascism by working very locally.

The Forge is a publication dedicated to sharing organizing strategies. There have been several Asks recently about what someone in the US can do to fight fascism, and the The Forge is a great source of inspiration.