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at a certain point of notability (or notoriety) it doesn’t matter what you put out, the range of opinions about it will be so wide and scattershot that anyone looking will be able to pick and choose among them to paint a picture of wild creative success or looming artistic doom

I am not in the business of giving politicians advice. But I will say that if the experience of Lincoln suggests anything, it is that there can be no real success without principle — ironclad and unyielding. You can tweak your message and follow the polls as much as you’d like, but unless you stand for something greater than the sum of your platform, your maneuvers and machinations will be for naught.

The most important section of the whole interview, I would argue, is where Coates explained how it is he decides what to do. He said, “All I can go to is my role as a writer, and my role as a writer is to state things as clearly as I possibly can, to make them in such a way that they haunt, to state truths and to reinforce the animating notion of my politics—which is that all humanity is equal and is worthy of that.”

The world he thought he lived in turned out to be very different from what he’d imagined it to be. He’s learned that far more of his fellow Americans are willing to do far worse things than he suspected.

The truth is that Harris lost the presidential election by 1.5%, and in a post-Covid headwind that threw out parties in power, she outperformed incumbents in most countries.

Through gossamer tributes, Kirk’s cruel condemnation of transgender people and his racist throwback views about Black Americans were no longer anathema but instead are being treated as just another political view to be respectfully debated — like a position on tax rates or health care policy.

Our industry faces the most sophisticated, venomous, creeping evil in America’s history. There’s no standing above this conflict. No impartial observers. If you’re on the sidelines you’ve made a choice and must live with it.