Have you been paying attention for the last eight years? Our civil liberties have been decimated. You can now be put in jail without habeas corpus recourse. Communications are being tapped without warrants. We invade countries who have done nothing against us. (While ignoring the ones that have.) We torture enemies, all but openly. We do openly scoff at the Geneva Conventions. We resign from international environmental treaties. We have moved from being widely respected to widely disrepected internationally.

That, to me, shows that change can occur. I'd prefer it happen in the other direction.