When I feel despondent about my country and my world, a few things that help or have helped:

• Rebecca Solnit's nonfiction book Hope in the Dark (which I still have not finished) which makes the point that YOU JUST DON'T KNOW. You don't. You plant seeds and you may never get to see them sprout.
• Cory Doctorow's novel Walkaway, Annalee Newitz's novel Autonomous, and Margaret Killjoy's novella The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion, which have people like my friends and me as creative and loving and disappointed and brave and effective protagonists
• Elvis Costello's song "Tramp the Dirt Down" (even if you feel no hope, transmute your rage into stubbornness)
• Josh Millard's song "Everything is Fucked (Keep on Going)" and Pete Seeger's song "Tomorrow is a Highway", on persistence and promise and the future