Words matter, even, and perhaps especially in moments of crisis. At such times, words provide us with a conceptual framework to understand the things happening around us. Choose words that are inadequate to the moment, or fail to capture its gravity, and you run the risk of letting down your guard in the face of chaos. Choose words that are hyperbolic or extreme, and you risk becoming like the boy who cried wolf or someone more interested in social media clicks than enlightenment.

As such, it’s essential to use words as precisely as possible. No, not every politician with whom…

It happens every time. Something awful transpires — something that indicates the venality of the nation’s leaders or certain of its people — and we are treated to the same refrain by swaths of the newly-shocked: namely, “This isn’t the America we know.”

It happened after Hurricane Katrina when hundreds of thousands of mostly Black people were left to fend for themselves or die in New Orleans. Although social media wasn’t a thing yet — this was 2005, when the Earth was young— you could still hear the surprise from commentators in mainstream media, on websites, and via e-mail listservs.

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For people who savor calling others snowflakes, Trump supporters certainly are a delicate bunch. And to hear many tell it, we should treat them as such, with understanding and compassion, giving them time to work out their sadness at the defeat of their Emperor God.

Calls for this kind of forbearance have filled the airwaves and op-ed pages since the election. Don’t gloat, they tell us. Be good winners, they implore. Reach out to at least one Trump supporter and try to engage in productive dialogue, comes the advice of political scientist Ian Bremmer.

Do it for the sake of…

Forget the polls for a minute. Forget the punditry. Forget the campaign hype that seeks to tell us what we want to hear or what the other side wishes to believe. The fact is, we don’t know for sure how this is going to turn out.

I can sketch out very plausible scenarios by which Joe Biden wins in a rout, but also a few, only slightly less convincing, where Donald Trump squeezes out another victory in the electoral college, while, of course, losing the popular vote handily. Such is the lasting force of an institution created by those who…

Those who deny its existence might as well deny inertia

Newton’s First Law holds that objects in motion tend to remain in motion unless acted upon by another force. We understand this as a description of inertia, and readily see how it applies to the physical universe. We slide a book across a table, for instance, understanding that it will only stop moving when it falls to the floor or when the friction created between the upward force of the table and downward force of gravity is sufficient to bring its motion to a halt.

But the concept of inertia…

As the novel coronavirus continues to tear through America, reaching new daily highs for infections and stretching hospital capacity across the country, one thing is undeniable: COVID-19 was never the biggest problem. We were. This virus, like most, is opportunistic. It takes advantage of pre-existing conditions. And Americanism is the world’s ultimate co-morbidity.

There is a reason 130,000-plus have died here, far more than anywhere else on Earth. There is a reason the United States continues to suffer under the weight of the pandemic, long after it subsided in most of the industrialized world. There is a reason Americans are…

Although I have always loved learning about history — and possibly because of this fact — I have never been a fan of statues. Even as a child, I thought they were odd totems to the past, lacking any substantive information that would allow those gazing upon them to make much sense of what they represented.

As I got older, I liked them even less. As a Southerner, I came to view statues as tributes to horrible people who fought to maintain an evil system of human bondage — ego-soothing security blankets for racist losers who produced them not to…

Systemic racism. It’s a concept we’ve been hearing a lot about lately, and while most Black folks believe it to be a persistent reality, many whites seem uncertain. Others flatly reject the idea, including key figures in the Trump administration who have denied its existence when asked about it in the wake of the current uprising.

If you find yourself in the skeptic camp, I have some questions for you, because I am curious as to your thought process.

We’ll start with an easy one.

Question #1:

Do you think systemic racism was ever a thing in America, such that…