What the images of George Floyd and Christian Cooper make clear is that, for people who happen to be black, there is no way to talk, no way to be, no clothes to wear, no hobbies to gain, no place to go to be freed from America’s original tyranny.

It is a founding tyranny that undermines this country and its ideals and its standing for every day that it continues. We will never be whole until we are past it. And we seem very far indeed from past it.

If the Trump era felt new and dangerous to you, imagine living it always.