Thread by @aliamjadrizvi

I’m often told, “Forget about the rhetoric, look at the policies.”

But it really should be the other way around.

Policies come and go, from president to president, from one party running Congress to another.

But rhetoric can transform, even define generations. /1

Some leaders use hope and positivity to unite people. “I have a dream...”

Others use fear and negativity to polarize and divide them. “Many, many sides...”

Both can win elections, but only the first wins the future. This has been shown historically, over and over again. /2

As Obama said in a recent interview with Prince Harry:

“If you had to choose a moment in human history in which you wanted to be born...you'd choose today, because the fact is the world is healthier, wealthier, better educated, more tolerant, more sophisticated,

/3

and less violent than just about any other time in human history.

...History doesn't just run forwards, it runs backways and sideways, and it requires us to continually push.”

More here: theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

I’ve said before here and on our @SecularJihadist podcast that

/4

I view much of what we see today—whether it’s the rise of Trumpism and the alt right here, or the intensification of Islamic jihadism where I came from—as a backlash more than a movement.

These backlashes are

/5

animated by old-school, backward-thinking people (mostly men) who are desperately trying to hold on to a world from the past that has changed (and is changing) for the better—and leaving them behind.

They’re not numerous—they’re just loud and they’re driven by survival.

/6

People scream the loudest when they’re in the throes of death.

The crime of the silent, decent majority is complacency. When Obama was elected, we thought we’d changed the world and we could go on and spend all our energy on gender pronouns.

Little did we know that /7

the election of the first black president wasn’t a transformative change in itself—it was merely a fragile first step towards transformative change.

And this is how history happens. A step forward, a step or two back or sideways, then two steps forward. Whether it was /8

the suffrage movement, the abolition of slavery, the civil rights movement, the fight toward marriage equality for same-sex couples, or the liberation of the civilized and rational world from the oppression of religious theocracy, every step of progress in history has been /9

marred to some extent or another by these backlashes. Often, they have been destructive beyond imagination, as in WW2. But ultimately, the world gets better for us all. The overwhelming, passionate response to the Trump presidency by good & decent people worldwide is evidence /10

of this.

It’s not easy to see when you’re living in the moment. But if you step out and look at the big historical picture, it’s undeniable. As MLK Jr. and Theodore Parker have both said:

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

/end