clipped from www.pbs.org

WILLIAM GREIDER: We have an opening in this crisis for, this is really going to sound grandiose. We have an opening in this crisis for a deep transformation in American politics. I don't say it happens this year, next year, or it's going to take a number of years. But we are in the shock of reality. And people get it everywhere and see the blood in the streets. And you tell them how this worked and who did what to whom, and that's a basis for a new politics.

But it requires people - this is the hard part - to get out of their sort of passive resignation to, "Well, we follow the Democrats" or "we follow the Republicans" or "we let this group or that group tell us how to think" and engage among themselves in a much more serious role as citizens. And when, as they do that, they have to be willing to punish the political powers, in smart ways or crude ways, however they can, first, to get a place in the debate. But, secondly, to force the changing values of the system.