Thread by @petersagal

OK, really getting off this damned site for two weeks, but first, a word: I honestly have been feeling more hopeful lately. A lot of terrible things have happened. But one of the things we've been confronting as a nation is: these terrible things have always happened.

We just didn't talk about them. Or we pretended they weren't happening. We have come to understand that the great, mythic longed for "civility" of the past was based on a gentleman's agreement to suppress entire populations' rights and voices.

Now, it seems that everything is out in the open...due to a renaissance of investigative journalism, to citizens being able to be heard over the cacophony of social media, to a new willingness to listen to those voices we had always shunted aside. People who knew all along.

And as these aspects of our country are now undeniable, there is a new groundswell of effort to change them. This effort is being met with fierce opposition, of course, but at least the battle is joined.

One of the shocking surprises of the past few years is the discovery that MLK (quoting a 19th C minister) was wrong: The moral arc of the universe does not, in fact, bend towards justice. Progress is not inevitable. Change can be undone.

But that moral arc... it can be bent. And everywhere, people are putting their shoulders to it.

Take care, and I'll see you at the end of our break. (OK, I'll also post pics from Japan.)