"A key difference is that in the past, different social groups had something to look forward to (emancipation and liberation), despite the looming threat of the

"A key difference is that in the past, different social groups had something to look forward to (emancipation and liberation), despite the looming threat of thermonuclear warfare. Nowadays? In the western hemisphere? It's all gloom and doom." It was so awesome to be disempowered and enslaved. That's why gay people are so much happier than straight people today. More seriously, though, there's as much optimism in activist circles today in America as there has been in the past. Especially if you hang out with the FOSS crowd, or in hacker spaces. 3D printing offers at least as many possibilities for liberation as any prior innovations. As for your rosy view of the past, I recommend reading about the split between feminists and abolitionists over the 14th amendment. Or the British suffragette movement. Certainly no advertising appealed to such groups until they were already successful: for the most part they didn't have purchasing power, and those members that did had derived it from buying into their own oppression (by, for example, being housewives). Advertisers have almost always, with few niche exceptions, sold a safe view of an ever-so-slightly better world.