A few days after the inauguration, a friend posted on Facebook, “Anybody else glad it’s over?” Meaning a tumultuous election, nights of protest, and a massive nationwide march led by women in pink headgear. I had to respond, “It’s not over.”

A few months ago I began posting online conversations with a friend who identifies herself as a Christian progressive. The conversations skidded to a temporary halt on Nov. 8, when she fell silent on Facebook. Guessing the reason, I sent a conciliatory email the day after, the gist being: Elections are always temporary. One side gets its chance to perform, then the other side.

Every president has his characteristic sayings. In the near future, “Let me be clear,” “This is not who we are,” and “I have a pen and a phone” will remind us of the administration now ending. Those were all understandable, if not always justifiable, statements; but one favorite phrase has always puzzled me: “the right side of history.” It sounds profound, especially to us history buffs. But what, exactly, does it mean?

A few columns ago I wrote about language as a gift of God: supple, powerful, and evocative. Also slippery in translation, as the laborers working on a certain construction project on the plain of Shinar (Genesis 11) quickly discovered. Mistranslations can be historic. During the Cold War, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev made a speech to Western diplomats, the key phrase remembered as “We will bury you!” What he said is more accurately translated, “We will see you buried”—a shade of meaning not quite as aggressive as Khrushchev’s attitude made it seem.

Several weeks ago, the journal Marie Claire took us “Inside the Growing Movement of Women Who Wish They’d Never Had Kids.” Did you know that was a “movement”? Apparently, women all over the world are daring to come forward and speak the unspeakable. “I realized that this was my life now—and it was unbearable.” “I know my life would have been much happier and more fulfilled without children.” “I wonder if my accomplishments would have been more spectacular [if I hadn’t had kids].”

Do you remember 1994? After two years of Bill Clinton’s overreach, Republicans won control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. Newt Gingrich was now speaker of the House: an idea man who had brilliantly nationalized the congressional races around 10 key propositions called the Contract with America. Conservatism was on the march, and boy, did those Democrats look sheepish. Six years later, Clinton left office more popular than when he went in, and it was Gingrich’s turn to look sheepish.

It all started the night Tom Wolfe was up late, bathing his eyeballs in the glow of a multimillion-pixel screen—web surfing, in other words—when he happened upon a long article in Frontiers of Psychology, dated May 7, 2014. As he read, he felt his mind boggling. “The Mystery of Language Evolution,” an essay signed by eight scientists, all prominent linguists, anthropologists, biologists, and computer scientists, was an announcement of failure!