One of my favorite lines in literature is from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises:

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

So much of human life happens this way.  So much of social change is like this, too.

Two pieces in the NYTimes today make me think that social norms are noticeably turbulent right now in ways they haven't been so noticeable for decades.  And the turbulence is voluble--it's too noisy not to recognize it.

One article looks at the surprising way that citizens of Chambersburg PA became activists overnight, even roping in the county DA, a Republican, along with them.  They were as surprised about this as anyone.  Will the protests result in any durable changes in Franklin County?  Perhaps at least in giving people a taste for political organization, and some experience in institution building; much like the womens' marches of the past few years, the number of individuals politicized in some deeper way by these events is not inconsiderable.

The other looks at a boycott of an Arab-Israeli tahini company (the phrase "tahini magnate" is used, which is fantastic) and what happened when the owner gave a donation to Aguda, an Israeli LGBT organization, "to help set up a hotline for Arabic-speaking Israelis."  The company was subject to a boycott from other Israeli Arabs because of it.  And inevitably it gets entangled in Arab-Jewish struggles within Israel.

Anyway, just take a moment to notice that we are in a period of astonishingly fast cultural change, on multiple fronts.