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QIn your book you don’t just provide an assessment but you also look at individual actors. What appeals to you about rebellious figures like Nelson Mandela, Thomas Paine, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Julian Assange?

A In a dysfunctional system that’s essentially calcified and can no longer respond to the basic concerns of the citizenry, it’s the rebel who will make a difference. I use the term coined by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, “sublime madness.” Niebuhr writes that in moments of extremity, liberalism is an ineffectual force, and Niebuhr is right. If you have a system of apartheid, you need a Nelson Mandela. If you have tyranny by the British crown, you need a Thomas Paine. Rebels bear a lot in common with religious mystics. People like Julian Assange are ornery and peculiar, but that’s who we need. We need those figures.

If you have a system of apartheid, you need a Nelson Mandela. If you have tyranny by the British crown, you need a Thomas Paine

QOne positive sign of the past 15 to 20 years has been the spread of gay rights, and with recent changes in Colorado, Washington and elsewhere, there are some movements toward curbing the war on drugs. I wonder what you make of that within the context of the economic and political injustice you write about.A Well, within the American political system you battle over what Freud called the narcissism of minor difference. In terms of war, Wall Street, civil liberties, the refusal of the state to deal with poverty and issues like Ferguson and Baltimore, the deterioration of the public education system, on and on and on — you have these debates, and it’s not tangential if you’re gay, but you reduce it to these social issues about homosexuality, about creationism, whatever it is. They’re fear-based. We don’t fight about anything that’s actually political.

That’s why these issues often dominate the electoral cycle, because on the substantial issues like the economy and corporate power and representative democracy there is no real difference between the Republicans and the Democrats.

QIs reform still possible then?

A If we don’t reform America, return this country to a level of sanity, it’s going to have a tremendously negative impact on the rest of the world, including Canada.

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This interview has been edited and condensed.