Yet: voter suppression, race-based discrimination and violence, politically motivated censorship in the schools, and gratuitous red-baiting remain depressingly familiar features of our present-day situation—but arguably worse, now aggravated by segmented cable TV and social media, mainstreamed by elected officials, and fortified by the proliferation of self-styled paramilitary groups itching for civil war; and getting worse, in part because the current trend of eliminating the arts, closing down the languages, gutting the humanities departments, and reducing the liberal arts requirements in our colleges and universities systematically deprives students of the opportunity to understand the present crises at a crucial point in their civic formation.
