It would be hard to find a better symbol of the cultural madness that began in 2020 than Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C. The district’s government emblazoned the phrase on a street near the White House that summer, during Donald Trump’s first term. It wasn’t just a reaffirmation of woke pieties by one of the most left-leaning areas in the country. It was also a deliberate and clear gesture of protest against the man inside the nearby building.

Trump has returned to the White House, and now Black Lives Matter Plaza is being erased. As of this writing, the process is either complete or nearly so. The words themselves, a lingering symbol of the self-hating monomania of 2020, are no longer visible. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered the plaza’s refurbishing following threats from congressional Republicans to withhold money meant for the district. The area will now display art from students and D.C. artists.

When Bowser announced the removal, I referenced the fall of the Berlin Wall. That was obviously a far more salutary and momentous occasion. But you can nonetheless still feel some wind of change blowing around Washington these days. The Beltway “Swamp” faces determined antagonism for the first time in decades. D.C.’s self-governing status is subject to serious (and long overdue) review. And the campaign of wokeness whose vanguard presented it as a new and irreversible normal is being thwarted. The end of BLM Plaza is evidence that it’s possible to undo what the Left has done.