Yesterday I wrote about using laughter and humiliation to make the White Supremacist clowns plaguing our nation in the era of Trump shrivel up and blow away. Spencer is, of course, the poster baby here, but he’s not the whole problem. The exchange between CBS News correspondent Chip Reid and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders illustrates a deeper problem. Sanders said:

If you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that’s something highly inappropriate.

Two points. First, Kelly is a civilian. Second, in the United States of America, our military leaders serve under civilian command that ultimately is constitutionally obligated to the leadership of We The People. Certainly we may raise up in respect those who chose to serve their country and defend our Constitution. Certainly we will honor, as President Abraham Lincoln in his 1864 letter to Laura Bixby did, those who give their lives in that service, but we do not grant anyone in the military a popeish mantle of infallibility.

If people like Spencer and his minions are deserving of public scrutiny and ridicule when they go off the rails, so too must all elected officials and those who serve in any branch of our government be subject to curbs on their enthusiasm.

Laughter, or the fear of laughter, is a powerful tool for keeping the haughty focused.

Eric Arthur Blair, using the pen name George Orwell, wrote to that point in The Lion And The Unicorn: Socialism And The English Genius:

One rapid but fairly sure guide to the social atmosphere of a country is the parade-step of its army. A military parade is really a kind of ritual dance, something like a ballet, expressing a certain philosophy of life. The goose-step, for instance, is one of the most horrible sights in the world, far more terrifying than a dive-bomber. It is simply an affirmation of naked power; contained in it, quite consciously and intentionally, is the vision of a boot crashing down on a face. Its ugliness is part of its essence, for what it is saying is ‘Yes, I am UGLY, and you daren’t laugh at me’, like the bully who makes faces at his victim. Why is the goose-step not used in England? There are, heaven knows, plenty of army officers who would be only too glad to introduce some such thing. It is not used because the people in the street would laugh. Beyond a certain point, military display is only possible in countries where the common people dare not laugh at the army. The Italians adopted the goose-step at about the time when Italy passed definitely under German control, and, as one would expect, they do it less well than the Germans. The Vichy government, if it survives, is bound to introduce a stiffer parade-ground discipline into what is left of the French army. In the British army the drill is rigid and complicated, full of memories of the eighteenth century, but without definite swagger; the march is merely a formalized walk. It belongs to a society which is ruled by the sword, no doubt, but a sword which must never be taken out of the scabbard.

Yes, retired Marine Corps general Kelly deserves our thanks for his years of service but he doesn’t get a pass, ever, in his new job.

On Friday, Mano Singham wrote Hugging as a protest tactic and included the 1999 video Michael Moore Vs. Westboro Baptist Church demonstrating that the best response to the small minded is not force and counter-violence, but humor.

I’ve written about this theme before with particular focus on Stetson Kennedy and how he brought down the Klu Klux Klan using humor and ridicule. Mel Brooks has shown us the answer to Richard Spencer and the latest gaggle of goofs who still think being white is their ticket to leaving loserhood behind: Springtime For Hitler!

We need an enterprising theater troupe to perform the signature number from The Producers and get the crowd laughing anytime Spencer raises his head from the ooze.

Then there are Trolls Against Trolls performing to ensure further Sieg Fails…

Today, in talking with one of my students I shared a personal idea about President Donald John Trump for which I have absolutely no evidence. My thought, not unique to me [see update below], I know, is that Trump’s whole reason for becoming president was so that he could get even with President Barack Hussein Obama for the 2011 Correspondent’s dinner by erasing every aspect of Obama’s presidency.

[Update @ 1406 on 21 October: I finished reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ We Were Eight Years In Power: An American Tragedy. On page 343-4 he writes:

It almost seems that the fact of Obama, the fact of a black president, insulted Trump personally. The insult redoubled when Obama and Seth Meyers publicly humiliated Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2011. But the bloody heirloom ensures the last laugh. Replacing Obama is not enough—Trump has made the negation of Obama’s legacy the foundation of his own.]

You don’t think Trump could be that petty? Please…

The only way that Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish could, with a straight face, say that:

I truly believe that this is the best location for Amazon in the country.

it’s that he is either delusional, high or in full politician mode and pathologically lying.

Then you have to wonder, how much county time and taxpayer money was burned through assembling this ridiculous proposal. If the proposal ever actually sees the light of day—please, please, please some worker send Sam Allard a copy—I have no doubt that document won’t be worth even a comedy skit.

Note in the official city video of the event (TV20 Cleveland, what a laugh) that Budish points to the maybe 3,000 jobs coming in two proposed distribution centers that may come to Cleveland—I’ll wait for the ribbon cuttings to confirm—simply as jobs. Usually when politicians talk about jobs they do their best to, at least, append an adjective like good. No such adjective in Budish’s remarks because a you’d be hard pressed to find a worker in any of the existing Amazon warehouses willing to describe their job as good. How do I know? I know because I trust Mac McClelland’s journalism. Writing in I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine. for Mother Jones back in 2012, McClelland described her undercover job:

Picking books for Amalgamated has a disadvantage over picking dildos or baby food or Barbies, however, in that the shelving numbers don’t always line up. When my scanner tells me the book I need is on the lowest level in section 28 of a row, section 28 of the eye-level shelf of that row may or may not line up with section 28 of the lowest level. So when I spot eye-level section 28 and squat or kneel on the floor, the section 28 I’m looking for might be five feet to my right or left. Which means I have to stand up and crouch back down again to get there, greatly increasing the number of times I need to stand and crouch/kneel in a day. Or I can crawl. Usually, I crawl. A coworker is choosing the crouch/kneel option. “This gets so tiring after a while,” he says when we pass each other. He’s 20. It’s 9:07 a.m.

There are other disadvantages to working in books. In the summer, it’s the heat. Lots of the volumes are stored on the second and third floors of this immense cement box; the job descriptions we had to sign off on acknowledged that temperatures can be as low as 60 and higher than 95 degrees, and higher floors tend to be hotter. “They had to get fans because in the summer people were dying in here,” one of the supervisors tells us. The fans still blow now even though I’m wearing five shirts.

[Snip]

In the books sector, in the cold, in the winter dryness, made worse by the fans and all the paper, I jet across the floor in my rubber-soled Adidas, pant legs whooshing against each other, 30 seconds according to my scanner to take 35 steps to get to the right section and row and bin and level and reach for Diary of a Wimpy Kid and “FUCK!” A hot spark shoots between my hand and the metal shelving. It’s not the light static-electric prick I would terrorize my sister with when we got bored in carpeted department stores, but a solid shock, striking enough to make my body learn to fear it. I start inadvertently hesitating every time I approach my target. One of my coworkers races up to a shelving unit and leans in with the top of his body first; his head touches the metal, and the shock knocks him back. “Be careful of your head,” he says to me. In the first two hours of my day, I pick 300 items. The majority of them zap me painfully.

“Please tell me you have suggestions for dealing with the static electricity,” I say to a person in charge when the morning break comes. This conversation is going to cost me a couple of my precious few minutes to eat/drink/pee, but I’ve started to get paranoid that maybe it’s not good for my body to exchange an electric charge with metal several hundred times in one day.

“Oh, are you workin’ in books?”

“Yeah.”

“No. Sorry.” She means this. I feel bad for the supervisors who are trying their damnedest to help us succeed and not be miserable. “They’ve done everything they can”—”they” are not aware, it would appear, that anti-static coating and matting exist—”to ground things up there but there’s nothing you can do.”

Now, that was five years ago. Maybe Amazon has made changes. Maybe the expense of anti-static coating and matting was seen as a good idea.

Yeah, right. Unlike Armond Budish, I’m not delusional, high or a pathological liar.

Cleveland mayors Carl Burton Stokes (1968-1971) and Dennis John Kucinich (1978-1979).

When 87 percent of voters of Cleveland don’t bother to go to the polls it suggests a non-caring citizenry. Or worse.

I realize it was a primary vote. But it involved a mayor who wants an unprecedented fourth four year term. It also drew a number of challengers. It didn’t make much difference. They didn’t get voters aroused.

It signals a dead civic town. A community not only uncaring but it is uncared about.

This is a dead town. Except for the cheerleaders.

Its leadership—political, business/legal and civic—lacks straightforward honesty. Greediness reigns. It is a time where those who CAN do and with little concern for the rest. It’s a take society here.

There was some movement on the downtown vs. neighborhoods. But it never got momentum. That was especially true when 20,000 signatures were signed to force a ballot vote on another huge gift to Danny Gilbert and the Cavaliers. And then those who got Continue Reading »

In 1954, James Olds and Peter Milner conducted an experiment with rats whose brains were wired to stimulate the pleasure center. The rats could choose to press lever A, and get a food pellet, or lever B, and get a shot of pleasurable feelings in their tiny brains. Pleasure beat out food and the rats starved.

Jump to 1970. Larry Niven publisheD the first Ringworld book. Niven takes the research of Olds and Milner and asks, what if? The answer is Drouds, Wireheads and Louis Wu. Wireheads, like the rats, would rather press the lever. The 200-year-old Wu, however, can control his addiction, as demonstrated in the book’s opening:

Louis Wu was under the wire when two men came to invade his privacy.

He was in full lotus position on the lush yellow indoor-grass carpet. His smile was blissful, dreamy. The apartment was small, just one big room. He could see both doors. But, lost in the joy that only a wirehead knows, he never saw them arrive. Suddenly they were there: two pale youths, both over seven feet tall, studying Louis with contemptuous smiles. One snorted and dropped something weapon-shaped in his pocket. They were stepping forward as Louis stood up.

It wasn’t just the happy smile that fooled them. It was the fist-sized droud that protruded like a black plastic canker from the crown of Louis Wu’s head. They were dealing with a current addict, and they knew what to expect. For years the man must have had no thought but for the wire trickling current into the pleasure center of his brain. He would be near starvation from self-neglect. He was small, a foot and a half shorter than either of the invaders. He —

As they reached for him Louis bent far sideways, for balance, and kicked once, twice, thrice. One of the invaders was down, curled around himself and not breathing, before the other found the wit to back away.

Louis came after him.

What held the youth half paralyzed was the abstracted bliss with which Louis came to kill him. Too late, he reached for the stunner he’d pocketed. Louis kicked it out of his hand. He ducked a massive fist and kicked at kneecap, kneecap (the pale giant stopped moving), groin, heart (the giant bent far forward, with a whistling scream), throat (the scream stopped suddenly).

The other invader was on hands and knees, breathing in sips. Louis chopped at his neck, twice.

The invaders lay still in the lush yellow grass.

Louis Wu went to lock his door. At no time had the blissful smile left his face, and it did not change when he found his door fully locked and alarmed. He checked the door to the balcony: bolted and alarmed.

How in the world had they gotten in?

Bemused, he settled where he was, in lotus position, and did not move again for over an hour. Presently a timer clicked and switched off the droud.

Amazon is evil. (This is why I’ve stopped shopping at Whole Foods.) Jeff Bezos has discovered how to exploit our own nascent wireheads, people too busy to be bothered engaging, and supporting, their community by actually interacting with other humans.

Maybe Amazon, and what the company represents, will be the death of humanity.

From Steve Holecko, political director for the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus:

It is clear that CCPC’s endorsed candidates have the Cuyahoga Democratic Party, the Ohio Democratic Party, and the downtown developers and big business community worried that they might lose some of their Frank Jackson yes men on the council, including Kenneth Johnson who has been on the council 37 years, and has never met a development deal or corporate tax break he didn’t like. Gail Sparks is opposing him in Ward 4, which includes Shaker Square and Buckeye/Kinsman. In the primary, in a field of 8, Johnson only got 48% of the vote (down from 78% in 2013). If Gail picks up her other opponents votes (she has been endorsed by three of them), she would win. Johnson and the establishment is worried.

This is why they put out HIT PIECE on her through the mail (which coincidentally arrived at the same time as a Democratic Party puff piece on Johnson). The HIT PIECE is filled with lies and was put out by an unregistered/untraceable PAC called the “Friends of Good Government” against fake politicians. The return address incredibly is Gail’s campaign office. This is an Ohio elections law infraction and a dirty trick. The postal permit indicates that the mailer was produced and mailed by Qwestcom graphics which does Democratic Political Mailings and is tied to notorious Democratic boss Bill Mason. They didn’t hide their tracks very well.

The piece claims that Gail “defrauded poor impoverished black Ward 4 residents charging them above market rates for the homes that she illegally sold them without a license and pocketed the fees.” In reality, Gail Sparks has never sold a property not owned by her in her life, let alone steal from anybody. She was fined for renting properties and pulling permits to renovate properties (like the derelict one next to her), something that strangely in Ohio you need a real estate license for.

Now Kenneth Johnson, who is double-dipping, and is one of the sleaziest council people, and has run these dirty tricks campaigns against his rivals for decades, is trying to maintain power with lies and help from the Democratic establishment.

Gail has been well-funded to date, but we can’t afford to mail out a rebuttal to people without raising further funds. We need any help you can give us to help Gail overcome these lies and take out this establishment political dinosaur.

If you can afford to please donate.

The key moment in the report comes at timemark 5:30: Oklahoma’s legislature cut $214 million from the education budget and gifted Big Oil with $216 million in tax breaks.

Yea free market…!

When anyone begins a conversation with some form of “Now, don’t take this the wrong way,” or “Don’t be offended,” we all know that we’re about to take whatever artless words that follow in precisely the way the speaker is certain to blame us for misunderstanding. Here’s a clue, if you think what you’re about to say (or write) could me understood, stop.

David French, writing in The Las Vegas Shooting Is Still Very, Very Strange should have stopped. French begins with:

Before I begin, let me re-emphasize what I stated in a post the afternoon after the shooting. Do not read this post as implying any sort of conspiracy theory. In fact, even now—more than two weeks after the terrible event—we don’t even know enough facts to concoct a conspiracy. We do know, however, that the story keeps getting more bizarre.

In other words: Blah blah blah blah CONSPIRACY blah blah blahh TERRIBLE EVENT blah blah blah blah blah blah CONSPIRACY blah blah blah. Speculation, the need to fill dead air (or pages) gets us into trouble.

French is troubled by two facts: first, he doesn’t know where security guard Jesus Campos is:

Just before Campos was scheduled to appear at numerous media interviews, he allegedly went to a “Quick Care” health care clinic and hasn’t been seen since. [Oops, JH] There was an armed security guard outside his house, and now that guard is reportedly gone. No one seems to be suspecting foul play, and as the president of his union notes, “Somebody knows where he is.” But this elusiveness is obviously not quite normal. Campos’s disappearance is but one odd element in the story. Another, of course, is the shifting timeline of the shooting.

And second, nearly three weeks after the massacre, French doesn’t know why Paddock did what he did:

The fact that a man could plan one of the worst mass murders in American history and do so without leaving the typical trail of clues and intentions is deeply unsettling. Time and again when mass shooters strike, they leave a trail of bread crumbs—whether they’re deteriorating mentally or radicalizing (or both), the warning signs are often obvious and warnings have often been given. Not this time.

The commenters on French’s panic attack are not kind.

Michael Harriot, reporting in The Root’s Clapback Mailbag: The Whitest Email of All Time for The Root, declares a winner!

From: Nancy
To: Michael
Subject: Your vile, sick, self deluded article

Hey Michael

Regarding your hateful rant about white people. If you think we are so bad you really need to go back to your African homeland where your own tribal leaders and ancestors pimped you for profit to jewish ship owners. Nothing to do with white europeans you despise so much. In Africa your honeland youll find they still never got civilized but there are cannibal warlords in Liberia. As Ben Carson said, a decent black man who excelled in a white mans world.” the best thing that ever happen to the black man was slavery as it gave them the opportunity they would have never had in Africa” you guys benefit from our civilization and our inventions. Cars, planes, trains, phones, electricity, tv, radio, archetecture. Roman and greek civlization is western civilization and Im sorry your ancestors are sad ass voo doo cannibals who never made a civlization.. Deal with it instead of hate and blame. Obama is a MuslIm which is very odd as Islam are the first to enslave your black ass. Go to Islam see what they still do to blacks today. So you should be thanking white men. We let you become millionairs in our society, Presidents, educated. Your complaining is vile and makes you unworthy. As far as crime. Lets face the facts. 40, 000 white women arr raped a year by black mren. White men dont rape black women. Wonder why? 300,000 black on white crimes a year. It is racial targeted hate. We cant help we are a beautiful intelligent race. But your acts of violence are transparent. We dont protest the way you people do as we have jobs. Not on welfare. In Japan during Fukishmi not one act of violence or looting. An honorable people. Katrina and other Us disaster its your breathen doing the looting not whites. It appears to me “Michael” sadly the name of a great warrior archangel you disgrace with your racial hate, jealosy, lies, and most import self delusions. What you are inciting with your so called “poetry” is that of your voo doo ancestors demonic verbal diarrhea . Id like to look you in the eys and expel your bullshit out of you. Your a disgrace to humanity and ungrateful trash. Like your islamic Breathen foul and unholy Obama.You will fall from your throne of hate and deceit and lies soon enough by the wrath of God. May i suggest you go to church and pray rather than hating on white peopke and twisting the reality. You could never make a civlization absent us and now think your going to slander us the hijack and get unearned credit. Well try. When we fight back I assure you we will win as we always do since the history of time.

USA…! USA…! USA…! USA…! USA…! USA…! USA…! USA…! USA…! USA…! USA…! USA…! USA…!

I’ve had a copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Imp of the Perverse on my desk for several weeks. I came upon the story after reading an old essay by Oliver Burkeman: On being tempted by the call of the perverse. The piece is eight years old, but I recently finished reading Burkeman’s older essays and this was one that I had flagged for a deeper read.

This morning I got an email from Gavin Aung Than—the artist behind In The Mood For Work and many other wonderful illustrations—about his latest: Zen Pencils No. 218: Procrastination. Gav chose to illustrate the 5th paragraph of Poe’s short story:

We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow; and why? There is no answer, except that we feel perverse, using the word with no comprehension of the principle. To-morrow arrives, and with it a more impatient anxiety to do our duty, but with this very increase of anxiety arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable craving for delay. This craving gathers strength as the moments fly. The last hour for action is at hand. We tremble with the violence of the conflict within us,—of the definite with the indefinite—of the substance with the shadow. But, if the contest have proceeded thus far, it is the shadow which prevails,—we struggle in vain. The clock strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At the same time, it is the chanticleer-note to the ghost that has so long overawed us. It flies—it disappears—we are free. The old energy returns. We will labor now. Alas, it is too late!

I’ve written much before about my muse, Calliope—most recently this—but the synchronicity of Oliver’s and Gav’s pieces caused me to think of her nemesis, my own Imp of the Perverse. I did a search to see if there was an anti-muse demon but I did not find such a creature. I did, however, find the goddess/demon Astareth. Like most female deities, the patriarchy has worked hard to diminish her so I take a listing of her as provoking laziness, vanity and rationalization with a grain of salt, but for now I’m happy to give her name to my imp.

So, what kind of imp do you have?

Previously…

Trevor Aaronson, writing in “You Have the Way Out” —Recordings Capture Brutal FBI Tactics to Recruit a Potential Informant for The Intercept, offers a master class in protecting yourself from the Federal Bureau of Investigation:

Refaie and I had been in contact for a few months, starting well before his arrest. I had initially suspected that he would be like many others who have contacted me with claims of FBI harassment and surveillance. I had assumed his claims, like theirs, would be impossible to prove, but Refaie turned out to be different. By recording his conversations with federal agents and filing local police reports, Refaie had effectively run a one-man counterintelligence program against the FBI.

The long tale of why the FBI was interested in Refaie and the smart steps he took to protect himself should be read by all Americans.

I have to wonder how many informants the FBI was running in Mesquite, Nevada?

There is a tradition in American politics that requires former presidents to disappear for a time, to write memoirs, plan libraries and depressurize from the insane demands of sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office so that the present occupant can go about governing. That has generally worked successfully for 43 former presidents. Ralph Nader, however, thinks that No. 44—blah, blah, Grover Cleveland, blah, blah—has a serious problem because No. 45 believes that having the bully pulpit means that he get to be the bully and no one will touch him.

Nader, in Obama—Too Cool for Trump’s Crises, writes:

Back in the nineteen seventies, there was a best-seller, widely read in the business community, called Winning through Intimidation. Barack Obama should pick up a copy, because that is what Donald Trump may be doing to him. Obama stays mostly silent as the belligerent Trump rolls back or destroys the legacies of Obama’s eight years in office. The mere thought of tangling with the Trumpster’s foul, prevaricatory, sneering tweets offends Obama’s own sense of civil discourse between politicians.

Given the present crises, this revulsion is just another form of self-indulgence by the former, self-described community organizer, Senator and President. There is no other political leader, in our celebrity culture, as well known or so high in the polls. Consequently Obama owes a different attitude and level of engagement to the American people.

In a previous column, I described some of these engagements, none of which involve a twitter fight with Trump. They provide focal points for Americans to rally around agendas and opposition to the politics of anxiety, dread and fear generated by the unstable occupant of the White House. That is, a way to respond to Trump’s Continue Reading »

First, Michael Harriot:

In the 241 years of America’s existence, we have purposely ignored the important topic that lingers over this country’s constant pursuit of happiness. Until we can come to grips with this pressing dilemma and confront it head-on, we can never hope for peace, justice and equality. For too long we have allowed ourselves to look the other way, blithely neglecting the one thing that could possibly heal the racial divide that cripples our great nation:

We need to talk about white people.

That’s how Harriot, writing in We Need to Have a Conversation About White People for The Root, begins his essay.

Time and time again I have said, written, preached that I fully recognize that as a white, male born in the United States, I am a member, by no merit of my own, of an elite group that stands on the backs of most of the other billions of humans on Earth. The gaps between myself and Bill Gates are smaller than those between myself and most of the world. Part of our existential challenge is recognizing that the former are far less important than the latter.

I won’t attempt to cherry pick the rest of Harriot’s excellent essay.

Read. Enjoy.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is tired. Really, really tired, and the mantles dropped on his shoulders by the likes of Toni Morrison, The New York Times and the MacArthur Foundation are not making his life easier. The man just wants to write, damn it!

After publishing yet another insightful essay in The Atlantic and a third book which has demanded his presence on what must seem to his jet-lagged brain and endless succession of news and talk shows, I expect that Coates will go to ground—perhaps in his next Paris—for a few months to recharge. America has a long list of real—Henry David Thoreau, Jerome David Salinger (interesting middle names)—and fictional—Terrence Mann and William Forrester—reclusive writers. I don’t think Coates is of that ilk, but he is reflective, devoting great time and energy to getting his writing as right as humanly possible.

For example, Coates begins Donald Trump Is the First White President this way:

It is insufficient to state the obvious of Donald Trump: that he is a white man who would not be president were it not for this fact. With one immediate exception, Trump’s predecessors made their way to high office through the passive power of whiteness—that bloody heirloom which cannot ensure mastery of all events but can conjure a tailwind for most of them. Land theft and human plunder cleared the grounds for Trump’s forefathers and barred others from it. Once upon the field, these men became soldiers, statesmen, and scholars; held court in Paris; presided at Princeton; advanced into the Wilderness and then into the White House. Their individual triumphs made this exclusive party seem above America’s founding sins, and it was forgotten that the former was in fact bound to the latter, that all their victories had transpired on cleared grounds. No such elegant detachment can be attributed to Donald Trump—a president who, more than any other, has made the awful inheritance explicit.

Than consider his lede in We should have seen Trump coming for The Guardian:

I have often wondered how I missed the coming tragedy. It is not so much that I should have predicted that Americans would elect Donald Trump. It’s just that I shouldn’t have put it past us. It was tough to keep track of the currents of politics and pageantry swirling at once. All my life I had seen myself, and my people, backed into a corner. Had I been wrong? Watching the crowds at county fairs cheer for Michelle Obama in 2008, or flipping through the enchanting photo spreads of the glamorous incoming administration, it was easy to believe that I had been.

And it was more than symbolic. Barack Obama’s victory meant not just a black president but also that Democrats, the party supported by most black people, enjoyed majorities in Congress. Prominent intellectuals were predicting that modern conservatism – a movement steeped in white resentment—was at its end and that a demographic wave of Asians, Latinos and blacks would sink the Republican party.

I came to Coates through his blog. I don’t recall how I first found him, but he first showed up on my blogroll in 2007. My first post about him came in October 2008. In We Were Eight Years In Power, Coates writes about those blog years:

The blog had an open feel to it, but not too open. I moderated the commenters and banned people. I had to. I wanted to maximize the number of commenters who could tell me things, and for that I had to build something beyond the profane cynicism that inevitably overruns my unregulated space. Between all the posts about Ravkim and Spider-Man, I would write about my attempts to conquer Leviathan or my reconsiderations of Howard Zinn, and the commenters would offer their responses. We would engage, sometimes argue, and I would learn. Grad students would show up under anonymous handles, offering contexts, objections and clarifications. A kind of seminar evolved in which scholars dead and present—Beryl Satter, Rebecca Scott, Primo Levi, John Locke—became my virtual professors. The process began to feed itself—commenters would recommend other book, and I would those and we would engage again. The great Ishmael Reed says that writing is fighting, and I believe him. The blog was a gym, my commenters were my trainers. And the books were film reels offering up new angles, new combinations, and ultimately, new possibilities [Emphasis mine, JH]. It was not perfect. I think I could have been more charitable. I think, from time to time, I assumed malicious motives behind worthy objections. But these days, with the blog gone and thus my old community gone [Nah, we still here, JH], with the gym now shuttered and boarded up, I feel myself in constant danger—even as I write this—of allowing the power of my punch, the speed of my limbs, to lapse.

Coates honesty there as a writer should be seen, read by all writers. Perhaps that is why Coates goes out, why he doesn’t succumb to the lure of writing from an undisclosed location. The Obama years presented him with a great opportunity. I think the Trump years, few may they be, present an even greater one.