The Arc of History Must Be Bent
“The feminist with a fundamentally optimistic vision, who believed that people, especially men, could be better, might be soon replaced by the rankest misogynist. The litigator and jurist who long subordinated her own immediate desires to the good and legitimacy of institutions, who had preached that slow change would stave off backlash, lived long enough to see Trump and the Federalist Society tear off the Court’s thin veneer of legitimacy anyway. In the 2013 voting-rights dissent that earned her the Notorious RBG nickname, Ginsburg offered an addendum to Martin Luther King Jr.’s suggestion that the arc of history eventually bent toward justice: ‘if there is a steadfast commitment to see the task through to completion.’ She was thus committed. Still, today she leaves the work not only unfinished but at risk of being undone.” Irin Carmon in New York Mag: The Glorious RBG I learned, while writing about her, that her precision disguised her warmth.