It’s easy to feel we’re moving backward.
With rogue Keebler Elf Jeff Session at the legal wheel as Attorney General, it’s tempting to fret a liberal future: Our president does not believe in science and the Supreme Court is shaded red by a robe. Evangelical citizens have have the right to deny business services to those they deem sinners. White nationalism is on the rise, both in number and volume (and tiki torch sales).
It’s enough to send progressives into apoplectic shock.
But fear not, liberals: History has always been on your side. It was true 5,000 years ago, and it’s true now.
Consider the latest shift off the political port bow, the federal legalization of gambling. Earlier this month, The U.S. Supreme Court — Donald Trump’s Supreme Court — legalized sports betting in every state. The ruling came after New Jersey, seeing the tax money Nevada raked in annually, filed a legal appeal insisting on a piece of the action. And they won it.
Had, say, Hillary Clinton been in office when gambling was legalized, the religious right would surely be spastic with anger. But with a president and Congress dominated by a dunce confederacy, what could they say?
The real failure lays at the feet of CNN and MSNBC, which woefully underplayed the ruling. Perhaps they didn’t see it as coverage-worthy in a storm of news currents. Maybe they’re not sports fans. What’s more likely, however, is that because the ruling benefits business — and earned nary a peep of ire from the right — left-leaning opponents did not see it as a victory.
But it is. A big one.
Consider what the U.S. Supreme Court, following states’ leads, have legalized in just the past three years:
- Gambling No longer will you have to go to Las Vegas to lose money on the Super Bowl. You can go broke from the comfort of your own home!
- Drugs In March 2016, the Supreme Court threw out a state’s challenge to legal marijuana, giving citizens nationwide the right to toke up. Sessions has said he considers weed as dangerous as heroin, but he also said on the record that “Good people don’t use marijuana.” His loyalty-over-logic reasoning has left him as reputable as Michael Cohen.
- Gay Marriage In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that it is legal for all Americans, no matter their gender or sexual orientation, to wed (crazy Christian bakers notwithstanding).
And that doesn’t include ancient liberal victories, including the defeat of prohibition, the Civil Rights Voting Act and the suffragette movement. There are 21 brothels in Nevada, where prostitution was legalized in 1971. If you told a Democrat in 2015 that the country would legalize gambling, drugs and gay marriage, you’d get an embossed invitation to the loony bin. And certainly, Trump’s disdain for America and its poorer denizens sometimes make the victories feel Pyrrhic at best.
But in truth, history has always arced left, thanks to the surge in technology and reason. Consider what used to be legal:
- Owning People
- Raping or Beating Wives
- Hunting Suspected Witches
- Color-Coding Beaches, Counters or Water Fountain
The list is endless, but irrefutable. We have reduced the major religions in the world to three. We no longer attribute epilepsy to demonic possession. Voter suppression remains alive and well, but not publicly tolerable. Remember: Jim Crow laws were once written directly into state constitutions. Here was Louisiana’s former test to vote (you had to prove at least a 5th grade education for access to the ballot box): 
And it’s hardly just an American boat that’s listing left: Global warming is recognized by the U.N.; Saudi Arabia approved female drivers; Afghanistan has the internet.
Even religious front lines are softening. Erlier this month Pope Francis told an Italian newspaper that “the souls of those who are unrepentant, and thus cannot be forgiven, disappear” upon death and that “hell does not exist; the disappearance of sinful souls exists.” A week later, he followed that with this bombshell attributed to a homosexual Chilean man: “That you are gay does not matter. God made you like this and loves you like this and I don’t care. The pope loves you like this. You have to be happy with who you are.” Catholics nearly declared a fatwa on the man for that one.
This shouldn’t suggest we’re anywhere near where we should be on the sociological map. And it doesn’t help having a president who doesn’t know how to work one.
But you need not be a history major to see the larger trajectory. Simply a recollection of value shifts within your lifetime likely reveal the direction we’re moving.
Up.
