Link Salad, the Mourning/Morning Of Edition
-- My President Was Black - Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic, Jan./Feb. 2017
"Obama’s DNC speech is the key. It does not belong to the literature of “the struggle”; it belongs to the literature of prospective presidents-men (as it turns out) who speak not to gravity and reality, but to aspirations and dreams. When Lincoln invoked the dream of a nation “conceived in liberty” and pledged to the ideal that “all men are created equal,” he erased the near-extermination of one people and the enslavement of another. When Roosevelt told the country that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he invoked the dream of American omnipotence and boundless capability. But black people, then living under a campaign of terror for more than half a century, had quite a bit to fear, and Roosevelt could not save them. The dream Ronald Reagan invoked in 1984-that “it’s morning again in America”-meant nothing to the inner cities, besieged as they were by decades of redlining policies, not to mention crack and Saturday-night specials. Likewise, Obama’s keynote address conflated the slave and the nation of immigrants who profited from him. To reinforce the majoritarian dream, the nightmare endured by the minority is erased. That is the tradition to which the “skinny kid with a funny name” who would be president belonged. It is also the only tradition in existence that could have possibly put a black person in the White House."
-- Make America Hate Again - Josh Parkinson, Mother Jones, Jan./Feb. 2017
"How extremists who champion Trump may interact with his administration remains an open question. (On Monday, a spokesman for Trump's transition team did not specifically comment about the uproar over Spencer's event but said that Trump "has continued to denounce racism of any kind" and "will be a leader for every American.") Trump's inner circle, however, includes people who have courted extremists. In less than four months, Bannon went from Breitbart executive to Trump's campaign CEO and then his chief strategist, effectively giving the bigots of the alt-right direct access to the Oval Office. Trump's transition team and early Cabinet appointments included Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, a hardliner on civil rights who is Trump's choice for US attorney general; Lt. General Michael Flynn, a vocal Islamophobe tapped to be Trump's national security adviser; and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who is best known as the co-author of a notorious anti-immigration law."
"Obama’s DNC speech is the key. It does not belong to the literature of “the struggle”; it belongs to the literature of prospective presidents-men (as it turns out) who speak not to gravity and reality, but to aspirations and dreams. When Lincoln invoked the dream of a nation “conceived in liberty” and pledged to the ideal that “all men are created equal,” he erased the near-extermination of one people and the enslavement of another. When Roosevelt told the country that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he invoked the dream of American omnipotence and boundless capability. But black people, then living under a campaign of terror for more than half a century, had quite a bit to fear, and Roosevelt could not save them. The dream Ronald Reagan invoked in 1984-that “it’s morning again in America”-meant nothing to the inner cities, besieged as they were by decades of redlining policies, not to mention crack and Saturday-night specials. Likewise, Obama’s keynote address conflated the slave and the nation of immigrants who profited from him. To reinforce the majoritarian dream, the nightmare endured by the minority is erased. That is the tradition to which the “skinny kid with a funny name” who would be president belonged. It is also the only tradition in existence that could have possibly put a black person in the White House."
-- Make America Hate Again - Josh Parkinson, Mother Jones, Jan./Feb. 2017
"How extremists who champion Trump may interact with his administration remains an open question. (On Monday, a spokesman for Trump's transition team did not specifically comment about the uproar over Spencer's event but said that Trump "has continued to denounce racism of any kind" and "will be a leader for every American.") Trump's inner circle, however, includes people who have courted extremists. In less than four months, Bannon went from Breitbart executive to Trump's campaign CEO and then his chief strategist, effectively giving the bigots of the alt-right direct access to the Oval Office. Trump's transition team and early Cabinet appointments included Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, a hardliner on civil rights who is Trump's choice for US attorney general; Lt. General Michael Flynn, a vocal Islamophobe tapped to be Trump's national security adviser; and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who is best known as the co-author of a notorious anti-immigration law."