Nothing in the record of human history argues for divine morality, and a great deal argues against it.

©Penguin Random House

We Were Eight Years in Power
By Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates has had an incredible journey. I love reading his work because he makes me smarter, and he does so with eloquent, precise language.

Each of the eight The Atlantic essays featured in this book can still be found online, but the bound compilation is worth purchasing for his insightful notes alone. All of the essays were new to me, with the exception of "My President Was Black," which I wrote about last year.

A true revelation for me. One of its central themes: this country was built on a foundation of lies, plunder, and cruelty. Coates' anger, disappointment, and cynicism surrounding this fact is palpable. The conclusion seems to be that this nation cannot make meaningful, permanent progress until we can accept its whole truth. I agree.

"At that moment, in that classroom, going through all the mandated motions, I could not see it. I could not see anything. And like almost every other lesson administered to me in a classroom, I don't remember a single thing said that day. And as with all the other buried traumas accumulated in the classrooms, I did not allow myself to feel the ache of that failure. Instead, I fell back on the old habits and logic of the street, where it was so often necessary to deny humiliations and transmute pain into rage. So I took the agony of that era like a collection notice and hid it away in the upper dresser of the mind, resolved to return to it when I had means to pay. I think now, today, I have settled almost all of these old accounts. But the ache and aftershock of failure remain long after the drawer is bare."
("Notes from the First Year," pp. 6-7)

"I remembered that once, as a child, I was filled with wonder, that I had marveled at tri-folded science projects, encyclopedias, and road atlases. I left much of that wonder somewhere back in Baltimore. Now I had the privilege of welcoming it back like a long-lost friend, though our reunion was laced with grief; I mourned over all the years that were lost. The mourning continues. Even today, from time to time, I find myself on beaches watching six-year-olds learn to surf, or at colleges listening to sophomores slip from English to Italian, or at cafes seeing young poets flip through "The Waste Land," or listening to the radio where economists explain economic things that I could've explored in my lost years, mourning, hoping that I and all my wonder, my long-lost friend, have not yet run out of time, though I know that we all run out of time, and some of us run out of it faster."
("Notes from the Second Year," pp. 35-36)

"The twentieth century, with its struggles for equal rights, with the triumph of democracy as the ideal in Western thought, proved Douglas right. The Civil War marks the first great defense of democracy and the modern West. Its legacy lies in everything from women's suffrage to the revolutions now sweeping the Middle East. It was during the Civil War that the heady principles of the Enlightenment were first, and most spectacularly, called fully to account.
In our present time, to express the view of the enslaved–to say that the Civil War was a significant battle in the long war against bondage and for government by the people–is to compromise the comfortable narrative. It is to remind us that some of our own forefathers once explicitly rejected the republic to which they'd pledged themselves, and dreamed up another country, with slavery not merely as a bug, but as its very premise. It is to point out that at this late hour, the totems of the empire of slavery–chief among them, its flag–still enjoy an honored place in the homes, and public spaces, of self-professed patriots and vulgar lovers of "freedom." It is to understand what it means to live in a country that will never apologize for slavery, but will not stop apologizing for the Civil War."
("Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War?" p. 80)

"Nothing in the record of human history argues for divine morality, and a great deal argues against it. What we know is that good people very often suffer terribly, while the perpetrators of horrific evil backstroke through all the pleasures of the world. There is no evidence that the score is ever evened in this life or any after. The barbarian Andrew Jackson rejoiced in mass murder, regaled in enslavement, and died a national hero. For three decades, J. Edgar Hoover incited murder and perfected blackmail against citizens who only sought some equal pursuit of liberty and happiness. Today his name is affixed to a building that we are told was erected in the pursuit of justice. Hitler pushed an entire people to the brink of extinction, escaped human censure, and now finds acolytes among some of the very states he conquered. The warlords of history are still kicking our heads in, and no one, not our fathers, not our Gods, is coming to save us.
Ideas like cosmic justice, collective hope, and national redemption had no meaning for me. The truth was in the everything that came after atheism, after the amorality of the universe is taken not as a problem but as a given. It was then that I was freed from considering my own morality away from the cosmic and the abstract. Life was short, and death undefeated. So I loved hard, since I would not love for long. So I loved directly and fixed myself to solid things–my wife, my child, my family, health, work, friends.
I found, in this fixed and godless love, something cosmic and spiritual nonetheless."
("Notes from the Fifth Year," preceding the essay "Fear of a Black President" pp. 110-1)
"Fear of a Black President" earned Coates a National Magazine award. 

"At thirty-six, with a now eleven-year-old son, I felt, for the first time in my life, a sense of financial stability. Kenyatta was back in school and had transformed herself into a scientist. She still worked part-time, but it was less necessary. Soon it would not be necessary at all. I took pride in watching her grow. She was always introducing me to things–Paris, pre-Code Hollywood, E.L. Doctorow. And now she was adding the wonder of cells and biological systems to her repertoire. I had not been prepared for the simple charm of watching someone you love grow. I had not known to look forward to it, and I guess that is because so often it does not happen, or perhaps when it does people generally grow apart. I don't really know. All I can say is seeing Kenyatta remake herself from liberal arts savant to med student, and doing so in service of her own mission, has been one of the great pleasures of my life. It was resistance: We do not have to be what they say about us. And it was more, something that I was actually lacking in my own life: service."
("Notes from the Fifth Year," preceding the essay "Fear of a Black President" p. 117)

"To celebrate freedom and democracy while forgetting America's origins in a slavery economy is patriotism à la carte.
Perhaps no statistic better illustrates the enduring legacy of our country's shameful history of treating black people as sub-citizens, sub-Americans, and sub-humans than the wealth gap. Reparations would seek to close this chasm. But as surely as the creation of the wealth gap required the cooperation of every aspect of the society, bridging it will require the same.
Perhaps after a serious discussion and debate–the kind that HR 40 proposes–we may find that the country can never fully repay African Americans. But we stand to discover much about ourselves in such a discussion–and that is perhaps what scares us. The idea of reparations is frightening not simply because we might lack the ability to pay. The idea of reparations threatens something much deeper–America's heritage, history, and standing in the world."
("The Case for Reparations, pp. 200-1)

"This was a shocking definition of "political correctness" proffered by a politician of the left. But it matched with a broader defense of Trump voters. "Some people think that the people who voted for Trump are racists and sexists and homophobes and just deplorable folks," Sanders said later. "I don't agree." This is not exculpatory. Every Trump voter is most certainly not a white supremacist, just as every white person in the Jim Crow South was not a white supremacist. But every Trump voter felt it acceptable to hand the fate of the country over to one."
("Epilogue," p. 358)

"Still there was nothing inevitable about Donald Trump's election, and while great damage has been done by his election, at the time of this writing it its not yet the end of history. What is needed now is a resistance intolerant of self-exoneration, set against blinding itself to evil–even in the service of warring against other evils. One must be able to name the bad bargain that whiteness strikes with its disciples–and still be able to say that it is this bargain, not a mass hypnosis, that has held through boom and bust. And there can be no conflict between the naming of whiteness and the naming of the degradation brought about by an unrestrained capitalism, by the privileging of greed and the legal encouragement to hoarding and more elegant plunder. I have never seen a contradiction between calling for reparations and calling for a living wage, on calling for legitimate law enforcement and single-payer health care. They are related–but cannot stand in for one another. I see the fight against sexism, racism, poverty, and even war finding their union not in synonymity but in their ultimate goal–a world more humane."
("Epilogue," p. 366-7)

*Must-reads*
This is How We Lost to the White Man
American Girl
Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War?
The Legacy of Malcolm X
Fear of a Black President
The Case for Reparations
The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration
My President Was Black

My President Was Black.

My President Was Black

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

Yes yes yes he was. Hard not to mourn and I don't have much else to add to what's already been said. I am sad and scared but also energized and not willing to give up just yet. Comforted by many people who feel the same and inspired by them to stay vigilant.

An elegiac piece. (Coates' description.)

"The ties between the Obama White House and the hip-hop community are genuine. The Obamas are social with Beyoncé and Jay-Z. They hosted Chance the Rapper and Frank Ocean at a state dinner, and last year invited Swizz Beatz, Busta Rhymes, and Ludacris, among others, to discuss criminal-justice reform and other initiatives. Obama once stood in the Rose Garden passing large flash cards to the Hamilton creator and rapper Lin-Manuel Miranda, who then freestyled using each word on the cards. “Drop the beat,” Obama said, inaugurating the session. At 55, Obama is younger than pioneering hip-hop artists like Afrika Bambaataa, DJ Kool Herc, and Kurtis Blow. If Obama’s enormous symbolic power draws primarily from being the country’s first black president, it also draws from his membership in hip-hop’s foundational generation.

That night, the men were sharp in their gray or black suits and optional ties. Those who were not in suits had chosen to make a statement, like the dark-skinned young man who strolled in, sockless, with blue jeans cuffed so as to accentuate his gorgeous black-suede loafers. Everything in his ensemble seemed to say, “My fellow Americans, do not try this at home.” There were women in fur jackets and high heels; others with sculpted naturals, the sides shaved close, the tops blooming into curls; others still in gold bamboo earrings and long blond dreads. When the actor Jesse Williams took the stage, seemingly awed before such black excellence, before such black opulence, assembled just feet from where slaves had once toiled, he simply said, “Look where we are. Look where we are right now.” This would not happen again, and everyone knew it. It was not just that there might never be another African American president of the United States. It was the feeling that this particular black family, the Obamas, represented the best of black people, the ultimate credit to the race, incomparable in elegance and bearing."

"For eight years Barack Obama walked on ice and never fell."

"And I also knew that the man who could not countenance such a thing in his America had been responsible for the only time in my life when I felt, as the first lady had once said, proud of my country, and I knew that it was his very lack of countenance, his incredible faith, his improbable trust in his countrymen, that had made that feeling possible. The feeling was that little black boy touching the president's hair. It was watching Obama on the campaign trail, always expecting the worst and amazed that the worst never happened. It was how I'd felt seeing Barack and Michelle during the inauguration, the car slow-dragging down Pennsylvania Avenue, the crowd cheering, and then the two of them rising up out of the limo, rising up from fear, smiling, waving, defying despair, defying history, defying gravity." 

Plus, here is a nice interview Coates does with Trevor Noah where he talks more about this piece and Obama as our first black president.

This sounds like yet another story clearly outlining how fly Barack Obama is, but it’s not. Because Barack Obama is not cool. Barack Obama is fucking remarkable.

Barack Obama Is Not Cool
By Rembert Browne

Great Rembert.

"This may sound like an unnecessary pile on in these terrifying final hours, but there’s actually a gigantic compliment hiding in this. Saying Barack Obama is “cool” diminishes all that he actually is. What’s true: Barack Obama is one of the most capable public figures that the United States has ever seen. In some ways, he is the greatest actor of the past eight years. He can bury himself in a role like Daniel Day-Lewis. He can orate and inspire like Martin Luther King Jr. He can ease a crowd with a laugh and a smile like Denzel Washington. He can nerd out like Neil deGrasse Tyson. And when he wants to, he can strut like Jeff Goldblum struts at the end of Independence Day."

"This sounds like yet another story clearly outlining how fly Barack Obama is, but it’s not. Because Barack Obama is not cool. Barack Obama is fucking remarkable."

Ten Letters: The Stories Americans Tell Their President

Ten Letters: The Stories Americans Tell Their President
By Eli Saslow

Ten Letters: The Stories Americans Tell Their President is an important, thorough, & honorable work, and I enjoyed it very much. Of the thousands he receives, President Obama reads ten letters each day, handpicked by his staff. If he decides to send a response, he always handwrites it. Eli Saslow ('Cuse alum!) follows up with ten Americans who wrote to President Obama and received a response. Each of the ten letters Saslow features is written by an "average" American expressing concerns about any of the biggest issues of our time: health care, war, unemployment, the economy, debt, education, immigration, [gay] marriage equality. The letter-writers range in gender, age, race and their stories are impactful. Though I've lived during this presidency & have been aware of the issues, this book still enlightened me to so much of what has happened. And while reading, I could see myself, my family, and people I know in these stories. If I couldn't, it greatly increased my empathy of them. The past three years were hard. My mom was laid off a few months after I graduated, and for a time it was a blessing -- she had deserved better for a long time, she sought something new, and losing a job could force you to pursue something better. (Until it forces you to pursue anything.) But after months of applying, taking a new class, and losing her unemployment benefits and food stamps, she still had no prospects --- and it got really scary. I was still unemployed, only having worked internships and freelance gigs. Then, slowly things started to turn. She found two part-time jobs, and I accepted my first full-time position, but still, it was hard for her to make ends meet. And my mom is a warrior, because I don't think, even to this day, I completely understand just how close we were to going under. And it's always been that way, because we've always struggled financially. But she made sure we still lived well. (Father too.) Anyway, she missed the deadline to apply for medical benefits under the Affordable Care Act, & a few days later she was offered a job (finally!) that offered her full benefits, full salary, and a move to Houston -- a completely new life. No one deserves it more than her. And not everyone is so lucky, I know, though it feels like it took an eternity & tons of hard work to get here. Still with hard work, not everyone is so lucky.

I know the life I am creating for myself is one of success and...security? Is that the appropriate word? "American dream," right? To echo the theme of one of the chapters: it gets better. My parents created opportunities for me to have a much better life than they've had, and in many ways I will. This may sound dramatic, but right now really feels like one of the great turning points of my life. Everything is changing for myself and for my family so, so quickly. My mom moved away. My brother went to live with my dad. I moved out to my first apartment. But I never want to forget what it was like for us to get to this point.

Good read.

"I don't want to blow shit up. I want to get stuff done."

2012=1968? by John Heilemann

"In such an environment, formal claims to leadership are invariably and forcefully rejected, leaving the processes for accomplishing anything in a state of near chaos, while at the same time opening the door to (indeed compelling) ad hoc reins-taking by those with the force of personality to gain ratification for their deas about how to proceed. "In reality," says Yotam Marom, one of the key OWS organizers, "movements like this are most conducive to being led by people already most conditioned to lead.""

"Capitalizing on this support is the central issue facing OWS, and its ability to do so will depend on myriad factors, including the behavior of plutocrats, politicians, and police. (In terms of presenting shocking and morally clarifying imagery, the recent pepper-spraying incident at the University of California, Davis, struck many as reminiscent of Bull Connor's goons dousing civil-rights protesters with fire hoses in 1963). But it will also depend on which of two broad strains within OWS turns out to be dominant: the radical reformism of social democrats such as Berger, who want to see a more humane and egalitarian form of capitalism and a government less corrupted by money, or the radical utopianism of the movement's anarchists and Marxists, who seek to replace our current economic and political arrangements with ... who knows what? "My fear is that we become the worst of the New Left," Berger says. "I don't want to live in a fucking commune. I don't want to blow shit up. I want to get stuff done.""

"Teichberg is a 39-year-old Russian immigrant with stooped shoulders and a mop of brown hair who grew up in Rego Park and is so jacked in to the electronic grid that he comes across like a character out of Neuromancer. But what makes him so interesting is that you could just as easily imagine him making a cameo in The Big Short. A math prodigy who was a Westinghouse Science Talent Search finalist before matriculating at Princeton, he left college (temporarily) after his sophomore year and went to work for Bankers Trust, the first in a string of Wall Street gigs at firms including Deutsche Bank, Swiss Reinsurance Corp., and HSBC. And what did he do in those places? He created, modeled, and traded derivatives, including some of the first synthetic CDOs. And he told the London Times, he was "one of the people [who] built that bomb that blew up the whole economy.""

"Like Teichberg's, their criticisms of that system are more sophisticated and precise than those of many of their comrades. But their politics, also like Teichberg's, are the opposite: earnest and idealistic, for sure, but also vague and half-formed."

I could never quite align myself with the Occupy Wall Street movement, and I can't quite articulate why; I don't know why. One might think I might be a little more sympathetic (I have less than $1,000 to my name, about $25,000 in debt, no job, living with a single mother who got laid off a few months ago...). At the same time though, I'm really confident in my potential to succeed in the career I've chosen, I have an awesome internship, I'm optimistic that my mom will find a job soon, I'm lucky enough to be able to live at home in NYC. I don't quite feel screwed over by the system just yet. I don't know. I also met a lot of the protesters; interns headed down there in September to help with polling, and I don't know, I just wasn't impressed. I didn't get the idea many of them knew what they were talking about. Anyway, I liked that John Heilemann evaluated how this movement can and whether it will, influence politics next year. And especially loved that he spoke to some of the more intelligent leaders (though the movement claims to be leaderless) who have identified some of the problems I've had with the movement and their ideas on how to improve it and make it effective. And it's not that I don't think there aren't fundamental things that need to change. I just never thought camping out in a park and yelling was the best way to address the problem. I think they (we?) have to be smarter about our approaches if we want to make any real differences ... meh, that's all I have to say about it for now.