I miss Woolworth, but I don’t miss segregated lunch counters. I miss the NFL in the ’70s, but I don’t miss the Washington Football Team’s old name. I miss the days when players played their entire careers for a single team, but I don’t miss the exploitive reserve clause the forced them to stay there. I miss the old suburban shopping malls, but I prefer the new, diverse suburbia. I miss the days when “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Holidays” were genuine well wishes, not ammunition in some imaginary war.
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In Trump’s alternate reality, the world’s most disastrous COVID response has, somehow, been the best. The math there is positively Orwellian. Instead of asserting that 2 + 2 = 5, he maintains that the millions of COVID cases and 200,000 deaths add up to success.
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Here’s the problem: Jefferson wasn’t just a slave holder; he was a visionary. But on the other hand, he wasn’t just a visionary, he was a slave holder.
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Today, we face a situation that seems like a replay of 1876: the prospect of a close election in which the underdog, relying on a nearly all-white party base, has already threatened to contest the vote if he loses. In fact, he’s pre-emptively declared that any vote he doesn’t win will have been “rigged.” If history holds any precedent, the prospect of such a contested election should scare you.
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Are we really so stupid that we can’t learn from our mistakes? Are we really that unfeeling that we can keep defying our own core principles in order to kill and degrade and oppress people who don’t look like us? There was a time that I felt the answer to both those questions was a resounding “no,” and because of that, I ignored the signs to the contrary. I won’t ignore them anymore.
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Identity politics doesn’t start with pride, it starts with shame. If you want to blame someone for identity politics, blame the slaveholders, the segregationists, the people who’ve opposed equal rights for women, who’ve discriminated against and demeaned LGBTQUIA individuals. Blame the people who support or apologize for actions that make others feel inferior, based on nothing more than who they are.
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