I think what I love most about these incidents is the way they neatly refute the conventional belief in linear political “progress.” Things constantly change; sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Sometimes progress decays into regress. The fact that the very people who think of themselves as the vanguard of “progress” can work themselves around to endorsing racial ideas that would have been acceptable to any Klansman, or gender fashions that would appeal to any genuine misogynist, is just amazing. As a student of the human comedy in all its absurdity, you have to love it. I can just imagine traveling back in time to explain to my 18-year-old self that the political left would soon be urging people to discriminate against one another by skin color, or crusading for the right of men to dominate women’s sports. The ceaseless itch to be “moving forward” or “doing something” just leads to going round and round in circles.