Given the options that Congress is considering regarding the debt ceiling, most American households soon will suffer a decline in their standard of living. Our leaders in Congress, many of whom are millionaires, might irresponsibly push the U.S. and global economies into a financial catastrophe, but they certainly will make the so-called hard, but actually self-serving, choices necessary to protect the wealthy and punish poor and working-class citizens.

Perhaps this summer’s terrible heat explains why many American citizens have focused more on the Casey Anthony trial than on the debt-ceiling and spending-cuts debate. Heat increases languor, while typical American households’ levels of stress, exhaustion and poor health increase lassitude.

Whatever causes this passivity, it creates a fatal cultural trajectory. All Americans, particularly progressives, would be wise to end this lethargic interlude.

As a first step, you might invite 15 of your closest friends to join you in your living room – if you still can afford a house – and agree on one collective action that will apply pressure to your elected representatives or ease the suffering in your community.

“Books can point the way,” John Kenneth Galbraith once reminded us. “Things happen when readers join the march.”

Nick Capo, associate dean and associate professor of English at Illinois College, writes as a public scholar and private citizen.

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