Monday, March 25, 2013

There at The New Yorker

It what has to be the least historically informed comment ever in the history of The New Yorker Jeffrey Tobin argues, if that is the word I want, that regardless of the Supreme Court decisions on the equal rights for all Americans, or "gay marriage," cases the cause of gay marriage can never go back but only onward and upward to full equality.

This notion of history has the progressing toward something better is silly even when Martin Luther King insisted on it. History's arc is a anything but.

Recall that in the 1930s Jews were nowhere better integrated and nowhere more fully citizens that Germany. Indeed, it is now a cliche to point this out. Yet in a just a few years Hitler, his henchmen, and hordes of apathetic Germans, to say nothing of the the world outside Germany, worked together to ensure their social and, ultimately, actual death.

Even if the S.C. agrees that all American citizens ought be treated equally, there is no reason whatsoever to assume that this means any of us is safe.

It is this sort term focus that allows the likes of the Koch Brothers to destroy the EPA in theory and practice; while ensuring that the "left," broadly understood, works to temporarily overcome one or another of the world's actually existing evils without effecting fundamental change.