I haven't seen this on Slog yet, so I'm just going to leave it here. You really should listen to (or read) the whole thing. It's President Obama's May 7 speech to the graduating class of Howard University, and in it he lays out his theory of political change while engaging pretty much all of the highly pessimistic critiques of the American political process that you regularly read here on Slog or hear at political events around Seattle.

I found this part especially resonant after spending time last weekend with people so frustrated by life in this country that they want to break shit and openly wonder whether things in America can possibly get any worse:

If you had to choose one moment in history in which you could be born, and you didn’t know ahead of time who you were going to be—what nationality, what gender, what race, whether you’d be rich or poor, gay or straight, what faith you'd be born into—you wouldn’t choose 100 years ago. You wouldn’t choose the fifties, or the sixties, or the seventies. You’d choose right now.

But that's just a small part of Obama's speech. If you don't like the part I just flagged, don't let it turn you off from listening to whole thing. It's much more than the above paragraph.

Yes, President Obama hasn't changed everything and yes, there's a lot that still needs changing—as he admits. But he knows something about creating change. Find yourself 45 minutes and hear how he thinks change actually happens.