NYT post-Election Day editorial makes me feel good about the moderation that is hard-wired into the democratic system:These policies, and similar ones in other states, were passed in an arrogant frenzy by a Tea Party-tide of Republicans elected in 2010. Many of them decided that they had a mandate to dismantle some of the basic protections and restrictions of government. They went too far, and weary voters had to drag them back toward the center.We may still be a hamster in the coils of a hungry corporate oligarchy, but moments like this are good ones.

A letter I wrote earlier this year in The New York Times:The Power of TechnologyTo the Editor:Re "Digital Maps Are Giving Scholars the Historical Lay of the Land" ("Humanities 2.0" series, Arts pages, July 26):What is most compelling about your article on the emerging field of "spatial humanities" is how it inverts the faddish misconception that technology makes information more interesting.The article's examples demonstrate that cutting-edge maps are only as valuable as the stories they illustrate. Technology may help make the Gettysburg battlefield and the Salem witch trials more "vivid and personal," but the tools would be irrelevant if our sense of suffering and injustice had not made these events cultural touchstones.When activists organize over Twitter, or donors rush online to help candidates or refugees, or citizens use cellphones and maps to report government corruption, they are driven primarily by the urgency of a cause or crisis. Amid the (sometimes)…

I am thinking about the September 11 attacks and reminded of my awe at all the people who helped and rushed downtown and gave so much, including their lives. For those who are still here, the toll is hard in its own way. Mary, who was a first responder that week, was wondering today if the people shaken by those days ever worry that the scars from that time keep them from giving their best in the present. My own worry is that all of us, and the country, and our culture, have internalized and accepted a culture of anxiety and "victim's exceptionalism" that justifies small moments of selfishness and awful acts of political and geopolitical meanness. Not to mention the tragedy porn that we've all been subjected to. Look at the homepage of USA Today right now. I have the deepest respect for the people who lost loved ones…