The pendulum could swing the other way and instead animal rights activists could be looked upon with complete disdain. Just like human rights, progress is never guaranteed.
I feel like the pendulum depends on all of us. We all gotta be hopeful and hope that other fellow beings also are like us and that gives hope I guess. We can swing the pendulum whatever side and its up to us in some aspect, so we personally need to do the best we can till the limit of our abilities
Isn't it though? To be sure it very much depends on how you measure progress, but I do firmly believe that there is a slow but inexorable push forward in terms of equality, human rights, and various other issues. Yes, there will be hiccups, but we always move forward.
(I don't comment this to imply there's not a lot of work we have to do, or that there's not seriously fucked up things going on right now; but hope - perhaps, even, a bit of faith - is important.)
Considering the current US regime would like to revisit Wong Kim Ark (1898), the 19th amendment (1920) and the Voting Rights Act (1965) it's fair to say they're trying undo over 100 years of civil rights progress.
Not to mention the growing ICE detention camp archipelago which is reminiscent of the era of Japanese Interment (1942-1946).
Even economically - though we're in a K-shaped recovery - many of the labour protections and economic promises of the New Deal have been repealed since the Reagan era (by both parties).
I wasn't particularly being dystopian. I was thinking of the quote:
"Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution."
