Perspective

This is a rather brilliant post and I won’t try to summarize it, but I was struck by the way Matt plainly stated something that is obvious and yet rarely mentioned:

Truman, FDR, and Churchill lived in what was, despite Grand Theft Auto, an almost unimaginably more brutal era than our own. A time when the “good” side in a war could be composed of a global empire and a apartheid quasi-democracy working in alliance with Joseph Stalin. And they really were the good side, because the enemy was just that bad. And not just almost absolutely malign, but (unlike, say, your latter-day sub-Saharan genocidaires) genuinely threatening and capable.

I’m as prone to despair in this time of reaction as anybody, but occasionally it’s worth remembering just how much worse things were just a couple of generations ago. Even limiting it to this country, American progressives should take pride in what they have accomplished and how durable these accomplishments have been in the face of fierce opposition at every step as we fight to preserve and expand them in the future.