There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part.

And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels—upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop.

And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.

(Mario Savio, Berkeley, 1964.)

There are a lot of people treating the NBA strike as primarily a media spectacle, or as an attempt to influence public opinion, but I don't think that's right—or at least not sufficient.

The operation of the machine has become odious, and the NBA players are putting their bodies on the gears.

(NBA and WNBA and MLB and MLS and WTA. Have I missed anyone?)

(I deleted and rewrote that last tweet, because I left off the WNBA, who should absolutely never be left out of a comment like that.)

Building consensus about the right course of action doesn't make the right thing happen. Winning majority support for a political candidate doesn't put that candidate in office. Amassing incontrovertible evidence of official malfeasance doesn't lead to consequences.

There's still room for hope. Some of us can still marshal optimism. But the walls are collapsing around us.