And you know, Lessig may be right. Certainly it is necessary, and it may even be possible, even in this era when 96% of the American public think money should be taken out of politics, and yet 91% of us also think there’s nothing we can do about it. This results in what Lessig has identified as the Politics of Resignation which however, as Lessig discovered, on an icy two-week walk through New Hampshire this January, covers an enormous frustration just waiting to be tapped.

Thanks to Aaron Swartz — his intrepid push to have all that we personally do count for the public good — Professor Lawrence Lessig transformed from an academic who wrote books describing what’s gone wrong to a citizen actively engaged in changing the way things work. As he says, it’s not that bad people are in congress. It’s that good people have to make sure their large campaign funders are happy to be able to get re-elected. So, therefore, the only way to fight them is to outspend them. Lessig and others have identified a way to do just that, just in time for the 2016 elections, after which, he claims, it may be too late.

P.S.: Election Day, 2016, would have been internet pioneer Aaron Swartz’s 30th birthday.

Lawrence Lessig, Aaron Swartz, and the Super PAC to end Super PACS