Tag Archives: Ta-Nehisi Coates

Letters

#43 On guilt

Dear Mat,

Conspiracy theorists miss a trick by alleging clandestine operations by shadowy cabals of powerful men who secretly run the world. They could simply point out the cabal of powerful men who openly run the world. Genuine, secret conspiracies occasionally happen as well. The CIA really did murder black leaders in the 1960s for COINTELPRO. But the surprising thing about COINTELPRO is not that public officials given ample funding and little oversight tend to abuse their power to control a populace, but that most people haven’t heard of COINTELPRO. The real conspiracy is languishing in the open, while febrile imaginings of the Illuminati and flat earths are common knowledge.

Describing Ta-Nehisi Coates’ account as “conspiratorial” is wrong because it implies secrecy. There are no secrets here, just very little awareness. Continue reading #43 On guilt →

Letters

#41 On history

Dear Mat,

Can society be working for some but not others? Can it be objectively measured? This is a much more fascinating disagreement!

The left expect the perfect society; the right think there’s only the incumbent. But surely history demonstrates two things:

  1. the perfect society is impossible and thinking it possible ends in mass-murder;
  2. status quo supporters were consistently proved wrong by reforms that were just over the hill, but they enforced the status quo, generally through small scale murder.

There is the politics of eternity and the politics of inevitability. Both are ahistorical. Continue reading #41 On history →