The Way Forward

Within the confines of the political system as presently constituted I doubt it, at least on the state and national level. On the local level, sometimes the money involved isn't as great, there may be a slight chance. Probably not for a variety of reasons. Nationally, watch, for example, who assumes leadership in the Democratic Party in the coming days/weeks. I expect it will be the same sorts of people who do the same sorts of things that landed us here. The party is an oligarch-funded hierarchy, and seems unlikely to do much that's different from what's been done the past 30+ years, since the trashing of the Great Society Progressives, not that they were angels. Their major interest seems to be to preserve the status quo, or at least there (and their donors) part at the top of it. They're not doing especially well at that.

If you're talking more grassroots-y things, it depends on how far folks are willing to go, and now many can be mustered to do so. Let's face it, the system has mostly adapted to protests; unless large numbers of people of color participate or there's a major threat to business and their property, in which case the system ratchets up the repression. See the BLM protest in Washington and the "temporary autonomous zone" protest in Portland in the last year of Trump's first administration for a little taste of how far the system will go to repress. Know also that it will go much further with the GOP in charge, because unlike liberals, they care nothing about public opinion. They manufacture it with their propaganda outlets. I suspect things would have to go lots further with civil disobedience, probably beyond than the Vienam War era variety, and that's a risk that most aren't willing to take. For now at least. We'll see whether the GOP's actions personally and harshly impact enough folks to cause them to take action. To borrow a notion from Che Guevara, "what will constitute the subjective and objective conditions for civil disobedience on a prolonged scale?" Then, how many participants constitute enough will be one of the questions.

Of course the thing that looms ever-present in humanity's not-too-distant future (or lack thereof) is environmental collapse from pollution. Pollution means profits, so I don't expect anything there to change in a society where the only thing that really matters to the people who really matter is profit in the next quarter. We'll have to wait until the collapse to see what happens. I give it 75 years or so, and the last 10 won't be at all pleasant. You know what people eat when the food runs out, right? Fortunately, I'll be dead by then.