1/ This is a really, really good essay. (Also very funny at times.) I will not try to summarize it; you should just read it. I do want to add a few points, though.

The Willful Blindness of Reactionary Liberalism https://newrepublic.com/article/158346/willful-blindness-reactionary-liberalism

2/ First, I share Osita Nwanevu's frustration with the complaints about 'cancel culture'. There are unjust firings, of course, but getting bent out of shape about Tom Cotton's ability to publish in the NYT is not at the top of my priority list.

3/ I am puzzled, though, by the targets the people who are bent out of shape about this pick. When I worry about chilling free speech, for instance, I am a lot more worried by the people who seem to think that death threats are a legitimate way to express disagreement.

4/ I am worried by the sheer number of women writers who report regularly being threatened with rape or murder. I am worried about people who swat people they disagree with. These seem a lot more chilling than the cases these writers normally write about.

5/ Second, I am a bog-standard liberal. I don't believe in special rights for anyone, unless we're talking about things like handicapped parking spaces, which are just a way to ensure that disability doesn't get in the way of the same rights to mobility that everyone should have.

6/ I do not think that white people are all evil (I have never reached that peak of self-loathing.) I believe that everyone is an individual, and that groups of individuals normally contain both good and bad people. It is hard to believe that I even need to say this.

7/ But I fail to see how ANY standard liberal, concerned with everyone's ability to enjoy freedom, could fail to think that the situation of African-Americans and other minorities just now is a FIVE ALARM FIRE.

8/ Some of OUR FELLOW CITIZENS cannot go for a jog, or get some Skittles, or walk in their neighborhood, let alone run from the police (legal last time I checked), without running a real risk of being KILLED by agents of their -- and our -- government.

9/ Some of OUR FELLOW CITIZENS have to instruct their children on how to act in the presence of the police, because if they don't do it right, they could DIE.

10/ Some of OUR FELLOW CITIZENS have to avoid places where other people will decide they "don't belong" because again, they might end up being killed by people who are supposed to protect and serve them.

11/ Liberalism is about being able to live life as a free human being -- to explore, run risks, and generally work out the kind of life you want to live for yourself, insofar as your doing so is consistent with granting others the same liberties.

12/ Obviously, you don't have any liberty if you're dead. But even if you don't end up as the next in the horrible depressing series of hashtags, imagine the constraints you'd have to observe if you were forever at risk of being killed.

13/ Always wondering whether this traffic stop will be the one that gets you killed; whether this neighborhood is the one it turns out someone who looks like you shouldn't visit, and knowing that you have to answer these questions right, on pain of death.

14/ If you're a bog-standard liberal like me, this is an EMERGENCY. (The fact that there have been worse emergencies in the past does not change that.) OUR FELLOW CITIZENS have to constrain their lives at every turn, and we HAVE to change that.

15/ Which is all to say: I find the idea that liberalism is in tension with something called "identity politics" completely baffling. It is PRECISELY my liberalism that drives my identity politics, if that's what someone wants to call it.

16/ I just think of it as caring about the freedom and dignity of all of my fellow citizens, as my liberalism tells me I should.

/Fin.