I'm 82 years old now.

And on a subjective level, in my lifetime,

I've not experienced such darkness, a sense of darkness,

and despondency,

and confusion and discouragement

on the part of progressive people.

There have been many crises before, many terrible times, many crimes committed by the system.

But the sense of resistance and possibility was at any time more palpable than I see it now, with some exceptions.

There was the Vietnam War, and it's hard to compare atrocities.

Three million people were massacred in Vietnam, in Cambodia,

100,000 or so in Gaza.

But there was a sense of resistance then

and a belief in the possibility of stopping it.

That seems less available now.

It seems like the... I know that people are resisting, but the system's

relentless imposition of power and arbitrary behavior has never been more untrammeled. That's on the

one hand. And the other hand, the gloves are rough, like the imperial system, of which the United States is the main hegemon, used to hide behind various attractive labels and slogans such as democracy and freedom.

There was always the hypocrisy, but not not even not no longer even bothers to do that.

So that they go into Gaza with real estate ambitions, or they take over Venezuela,

not talking about democracy and all that nonsense, but saying we want the oil.

So that on the one hand, on the left, I think there's a sense of shock, despondence,

and a lot of a lot of people, and on the part of the system, there's an untrammeled, undisguised,

...