History Grinds On

     It's painful to watch: some of my friends and former friends, lifelong Republicans, or conservatives, or l/Libertarians, are starting to wonder if they might have some very unsavory bedfellows, as the Trump administration departs farther and farther from norms of civilized, decent behavior and the rule of law.

     They're in an awkward position, among their own friends, many of who are very much on board with wherever the current version of the GOP is headed; others are suppressing their own doubts, struggling to come up with reasons why the Democrats could only be worse, or why no moderate or even traditional Republican should try sailing into the blowhard winds coming from the White House.

     Some of them may bail out, eventually, and at no small short-term personal cost; ask Liz Cheney.  Others will ride it all the way down until it augers in, as it inevitably must, "good Germans," patriots who "had no idea what all was going on."

     The perpetrators will some day come to justice, or at least flee from it, by death or jet plane, red-handed and reviled, but the people who stood idly by and let it happen, the cheering throngs who never looked too closely, the passive fellow-travelers who figured it would all blow over if they looked the other way, they'll all get a pass, just like always.

     We're going to be stuck with the hard work of rebuilding a society that values science and sanity, that believes in the inherent worth of people, that all men -- and all women -- are equal before the law, and many of our fellows will still be drifting along with the current, ignoring that scintilla of guilt sizzling away in the back of their minds: they could have been against the current mess sooner; they could have helped nip it in the bud.  They didn't, and the blood is already on everyone's hands.

     There will come a day when they shake their hands sadly, and mutter, "We didn't know.  We couldn't have stopped it."  What they'll mean is, "We didn't want to know.  It was too much effort to stop it," but history says we'll let them hang on to their self-protecting illusions, and work to do better next time.

     The march of human progress is not a smooth, simple upward curve.  It never has been.