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The Progressive Problem
For progressives in the US — and, indeed, in many parts of the world — recent events have called into question our faith in the goodness of people, and in our continued march forward towards a better tomorrow.
It’s only been roughly a decade since those of us in the US were celebrating in amazement the election of Barack Obama as our president, an event that seemed to usher in a new era of progressive values.
Since then, however, we’ve seen the election of Donald Trump, an event that daily seems to repudiate all the victories we thought we had won, all the bridges we thought we had crossed. And now in many states we are seeing new abortion laws that represent a fresh resurgence of a repressive Christian right.
No wonder zombie movies have been popular of late: so many of us feel like increasingly isolated survivors having to fight off forces that we thought were previously vanquished and long buried, forces that seem to be arising all around us, springing at us from all sides.
Many of us believed Martin Luther King Jr. when he said that “The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.” Increasingly, though, that arc seems to be bending towards nationalism, populism, racism, mass murder, environmental collapse, and a sort of modern corporate feudalism.
