I grew up believing the MLK maxim that the arc of the universe bends toward justice. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe, though, I had another thought. The arc of the universe is actually a sine wave, not an arc. It oscillates back and forth, not bending to anywhere. It might be better in the long run that we think that way.

   A few years ago when I read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, I read it as a cautionary tale: rights are not guaranteed, they must be vigilantly and continuously fought for. Otherwise the forces of evil will re-emerge. Overturning Roe has proven that what should become basic rights are fragile constructs that have to be shored up and fought for like a coast line against a relentless tide. Okay. That’s overly dramatic. Let’s get back to something I’m supposed to know about: trigonometry and sine waves.

   I got an A in trig in high school. I did that without ever comprehending what trigonometry actually was or what it did. (There might even have been a time during the course work itself, on my way to that A, where I might have thought trigonometry was what you get from poorly cooked pork, but I’m not sure anymore.) Happily for me, trig involved a lot of tables that could be memorized and spit back up on tests. Memorizing was my superpower in school. Actually it was a crutch for not being terribly gifted intellectually. But memorizing involves something I’m very good at, which is repeating things over and over again. The downside of memorizing your way to academic success is that once the test is over, the “knowledge” that you had “acquired” for it dissolves like an Alka Seltzer, and then you’re as dumb as hair once again. 

The downside of memorizing your way to academic success is that once the test is over, the “knowledge” that you had “acquired” for it dissolves like an Alka Seltzer, and then you’re as dumb as hair once again. 

   But back to the arc of the universe.

  The present sine wave bending toward injustice is nothing new. In fact the wave has peaked in almost neatly defined  one hundred year intervals. The 2020ish peak of anti-immigrant and racist fervor is but a repetition of the 1920 ish Immigration Act and spread of Jim Crow, and was itself a reflection of the 1820 Missouri Compromise, which wrote enslavement into the law of the land. (Shoehorning injustice into neat 100-year intervals makes it easier to memorize the time periods, by the way.)

   As soon as the sine wave hits the nadir of nativism, however, it oscillates back upward. The Missouri Compromise gave way to the Civil War and the end of legal slavery, the Immigration Act led to the New Deal and an expansion of civil rights, and the present MAGA eruption will eventually give way to…well, we’ll see when exactly.

   The arc of the universe is a sine wave, chiefly because we refuse to learn from our past failings. The universe insists on learning about justice by memorizing it. The universe will give itself an “A” for, say, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, but then eventually rebounds with a Supreme Court majority that dissolves them both as if they never existed. Like an Alka Seltzer.

   It is enough to give you heartburn. Which is why nowadays I take a lot of Alka Seltzer – tangentially speaking.