https://youtu.be/OCUlE5ldPvM

HT Freddie deBoer: There is no such thing as history

Tomorrow a cop could come up and shoot me and get away with it. That’s what we all have to deal with. But the odds would be vastly higher of that if I were black. That’s what black people have to deal with. And if next year those odds are a few tenths of a percentage point lower, if the gap has narrowed just that much, the moral horror of living under that condition will not have shrunk an iota. Progress did not come soon enough or real enough for Alton Sterling or Philando Castille. It never does. See that’s the little paradox of assuming progress, as the Jon Chaits of the world always do: if it’s to be assumed, then there’s nothing to celebrate, and if you do celebrate, you celebrate on the backs of those for whom progress always comes a day too late. If the target does not change with the times, if progress in fact does not outstrip the progress that’s claimed, then it’s only progress for those who need it least. No, it’s not 1968. That’s not the tragedy. The tragedy is that it’s 2016, and here we are, a million boots in line, stuck in this grim and awful world. And Jon Chait is locked in here with us.