“You can wander through the Smithsonian Museum of American History looking for hints of where it all started, for the historical analogs for this point in our oscillating cycle of glory and blood. We brought the slaves and built the land of freedom; we killed the natives and planted the tree of liberty; we won the war of liberation and fell in love with Jim Crow. On and on and on. It’s a mistake to ever get too comfortable with where America is going. There is always someone somewhere plotting to drag us back into the past. “How did we become Us?” asks the museum’s centerpiece exhibit of social movements. Turns out we haven’t, quite yet. In that exhibit is a black and white news photo of columns of KKK members, holding hands, marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, with the US Capitol behind them. I peered down at the date: 1925. A perfect century ago. The cycle is turning right on time”