Resisting Progress

FIFTY YEARS AGO homosexuality was a crime. The worst insult was "queer". Now, gay folks marry with the approval of the American legal system. Fifty years ago African-Americans were marching and rioting not for any sort of equality, which everyone knew was impossible, but for decent treatment. Even with all the racism in American today, the situation is much better than it was fifty years ago. In today's America, racists are at least sufficiently ashamed of their racism to tend generally to conceal it. Wives were the chattel property of husbands. Now, women are continuing the long process of gaining gender equality, and are rapidly moving in large numbers into the ranks of our political leaders. So, America not only is changing rapidly now, it always has tended to change rapidly, being a vital, volatile, turbulent and extremely creative culture. And in America, the change has always tended towards progress, towards better attitudes, better ways of doing things. The trend, the arc of justice, has indeed been gradual, and sluggish, but it tends towards gender equality, acceptance of diverse sexuality, more cooperative economics and stronger community structures, more, not less, international cooperation. The trend of American history is to move from the traditional to innovation, to change, to progress. This is why Trump and the current incarnation of the conservative Christian movement, as embodied in the Republican party, is in dire peril of becoming extinct. Every year, more and more Americas accept the reality of man made climate change. Its embarrassingly slow, but its happening. And I hate to break it to you followers of Jerry Falwell Jr. and Franklin Graham, you millions of right wing evangelical Christians: the gay folks are out of the closest, and here to stay. you tried to exterminate them, you failed, so, give it up. Its becoming a more liberal, progressive world, despite the recent epidemic of extreme right wing populism sweeping through the western world. That will burn out, soon enough, thank the lord. Ultra nationalism is as outdated as religion, free market capitalism, and all the other conservative sacred cows. Repairing the damage from climate change, eliminating all disease, establishing sustainable, efficient, effective economic systems with reasonable living standards and equality.....all of these are doable goals for human kind over the next half century, if we simply stop arguing bout it, and start doing it. For that, what is required is a outcry by the billions of the world's poor, demanding all the above.