I like to think it's improving … Then I read something like the above and it is very hard to feel we're not actually regressing instead.

It's very sobering to know that whatever good things we institute and bad things we abolish, time can turn and our hard work can be undone. But the hope in that is that the bad things that come along can be undone, too--and so we keep on working and struggling. --And remembering the good moments and victories, not as consolation prizes, but to take heart and strength from them.