Coalition for the Sane: Harper's and Similar Magazines Are Just Doomscrolling in Printed Form Spreading Liberal Despair For More Than A Century

 

I'm very aware of how badly print journalism is doing, which is one of the reasons why I'm still astonished so many left-wing magazines are still in existence in print form. I speak of Harper's, The Nation, The Atlantic, The New Republic and The New Yorker all of which I've either read frequently, had a subscription to more then a few and which I still browse when I'm in either a bookstore or Penn Station.

None of these publications have a huge individual readership and if I had to guess there's a significant overlap between them collectively. They're not the kind of magazine I can see anyone who isn't a college graduate reading voluntarily and I bet in states like Mississippi and Arkansas you could count the number of subscriptions on one hand. And having read all of them I can assure you they're all essentially covering the same subject matter and in tone they're virtually identical particularly in the opinion sections. They all have the tenor of the professor those who went to college all had and that even if you agreed with their lecture you secretly were put to sleep by their monotony or were annoyed by their stridency.

And having read many of them well before the internet and social media were part of our daily lives I can assure that they were all basically doomporn before that term existed. And now that you can find them so easily (including this one) I've come to question their purpose in the grand scheme of things.

I'm not saying that they don't have value when it comes to some of their individual journalism and interviews to be sure but it does astonish me that Mother Jones still exists when magazines such as Newsweek is gone and Time is a shell of its former self. Much of it no doubt has to do with the fact they are being propped up by wealthy academics and interests who truly believe they serve some kind of higher calling but the reality of America is much different. Combined their readership wouldn't come close to what CNN or MSNBC manages on a single night and given their tenor they know all too well what a choke-hold the right-wing media has on so much of America. And considering how much the authors of their columns clearly hold both political parties in equal amounts of contempt, I can't imagine they're getting support from the Democrats. So why are they here?

I don't have an answer but I can speculate as to why these publications do have a following and why the people who write them believe their necessary. Harper's and similar publications are written by some of the most left-leaning academics in the country for essentially college educated or post-grad people.  Now if you can afford subscriptions to them, as opposed to say The New Criterion or Forbes, you meet the progressive mindset of being rich, well-educated and almost certainly white. In other words, the American Dream is working perfectly for you and you're reading to make sure that the rest of the country is asleep and you're not.

All of these publications, especially after Trump's election but even when Democrats or other Republicans are in office, are almost certainly staffed  by the kind of people who either didn't vote or voted for Nader in 2000 and then said W. stole Florida or either didn't vote or voted for Jill Stein in 2016 and then argued about the unfairness of the electoral college.  They hate Republicans with every fiber of their being and are convinced the Democrats sold out years ago because they betrayed 'the cause'. They can't define what 'the cause' is and they rarely, if ever, have stories in their publications of real-life examples of left-wing theory. And often when they do, its when they've realized they didn't work and are only really reporting it years after right-wing media has made it clear they failed. Witness a  recent Atlantic story that argued that the policy of harm-reduction had failed in cities like Burlington and Portland – years after right wing media had showed to its much larger audience how badly it had played out in cities like San Francisco and Seattle.

Almost all of their magazines are devoted to the collapse of some major liberal institution or some failure of the Trump administration with such detail that it almost seems like they're doing it with a kind of eagerness. Considering that most of their op-eds in the last decade have been about how all things Trump and Republicans are destroying the country as well as the collapse of the liberal order, you'd think a little seriousness would be in order. Yet the detail these journals go into when they describe how our country is in slave to seniors or the way that RFK Jr has destroyed the American Health System has a combination of smugness to it that I always associate with the left far more than the right. It's like their anticipating America finally becoming a dictatorship just so they can write about in their final issue with a great big "We Told You So!" on the front cover.

So much of these publication stories are often vastly out of correlation with what is happening in America, even under Trump, to the point that I can't help but wonder if these are just the left-wing versions of conspiracy theories. I remember seeing multiple publications in The Atlantic or Harper's arguing that Trump was going to eventually seize power and cause a military coup. They argued in the spring that in case the majority of the House was close Trump would order the military to seize ballot boxes and put them under his custody.  There was no evidence he was planning to do this – and to be very clear if he was I'd argue that The Atlantic's first duty would have been to go the Democrats or some other outside agency with people they could trust.  Furthermore if he is the dictator they say he wants to be and he heard of this article, well, wouldn't he have arrested these writers or at the very least tried to sue them if there was truth to it?  Considering that he is the most litigious President on so many minor details in American life, you'd think he'd do that when something that was a threat to him became published.

And yet that did not happen. Now another theory popular among columnists like this (Heather Cox Richardson is one of the bigger posits of it) is that even if the Democrats win the election Mike Johnson and JD Vance will just refuse to swear them in. They will ignore the results of the people and just fire the clerk and then appoint someone who will ignore the result of the elections and, I guess, all the Democrats will be arrested by the FBI and face a firing squad in front of the White House?

Now I'm fully aware of Trump's election denialism and who he is. But again if he were actually going to do this doesn't that call for more than just circulating memos? And again, wouldn't it be in the President's interest to make sure that the people who know this are arrested and/or killed? That is, lest we forget, what dictators have a habit of doing to political dissidents and journalists. Wouldn't the author meet the fate of Alexei Navalny?

If it sounds like I'm not taking Trump as a threat seriously, I am. But I can't help but be aware of the disconnect between the screaming and stridency of left-wing journals like the ones I describe and what I actually witness happening on the news. Is his Justice Department engaging in false prosecutions of his political rivals? Yes. Have all of them been dismissed by other judges? Yes. Has he introduced legislation like the SAVE Act and demanded it be passed by the Senate? Yes. Has John Thune refused to put it on the floor? Also yes. Has the President pushed so many of his policies to the point that they get to the Supreme Court? Also yes. Has the Supreme Court refused to go along with the most important ones, such as tariff and election rules for mail-in voting? Also yes.

And so on. All the things the President turn my stomach – and I often watch network television with this dread some point he's going to make an announcement along those lines. But it never comes. No I haven't listed every single thing that each time is considered the first step down the slippery slope but he never escalates, usually because his focus shifts to something else, equally bad or backs down while declaring he won on social media. His tweets don't make it so anymore then the left's arguments that we are getting there.

That's also why, for all the arguments in these publications of how we're practically a dictatorship now – no seriously, we really are! – I feel compelled to remind people that there are already enough actual dictators and that while Trump clearly admires them, he doesn't have the follow through to actually be one. If Trump were an actual dictator, he'd do more than just loudly tweet and scream on social media every time he suffered a reversal. Actual dictators like Putin, like the Saudis, like Kim Jung Il, do not simply  mess around with social media, they actually kill and arrest their enemies and do things that actual suppress so that no one resists at all. Publications like The Nation and Harper's would have been raided as early as inauguration day, their writers arrested. They certainly wouldn't be allowed to interview Trump's staff members or even write about them. That's how dictatorships work. They actually destroy the institutions; they don't merely weaken them.

Now I'm not going to deny Trump is the worst President in history and that all the horrible things that are reported about him aren't true. But for God's sake only report on the horrible things he actually does; don't use them to argue their proof of future bad acts unless you actually have proof.

That actually gets to a different point. Let's say for the record I agree with the thesis of these articles: that even if the Democrats win, Trump will ignore the results and there's nothing I, as a citizen, can do to stop him. Well, if that's the case, why should I bother to vote at all? Why should I spend my time and energy trying to elect Mary Peltola to the Senate in Alaska if she's not going to get seated even if she wins? Why should I vote for Tom Suozzi, who's critical to Democrats taking the House, if the end result is he's thrown into jail?

I think that the threat Trump holds to democracy is a valid one. But just as valid is the attitude in these articles that even when it's working perfectly, democracy is useless. I remember vividly how in the final weeks of the 2024 election the intern's of The Nation published an editorial where they reversed a previous endorsement of Harris. They argued that neither candidate would make a difference either to the fate of Gaza, but that democracy wouldn't be better off if one candidate or the other was elected. We knew already that was a lie so for the editors of The Nation to allow it to go to print was journalist malpractice.

But I'm pretty sure that the reason they did was the real reason these magazines exist. They don't believe in democracy any more than the far right does. In fact I read an op-ed by Thomas Frank in Harper's in January of 2026 called 'Liberal Despair' in which he wrote of the destruction of Trump's first year in office with something that bordered on admiration. He tore about the results of the 2025 elections, saying that by agreeing to reopen the government in their aftermath Democrats had betrayed the people, and spent more time criticizing Clinton's efforts to 'triangulate the right' and yearning for so many candidates like Mondale and Dukakis who'd lost in landslides to Reagan and Bush 41. The results of those two elections had taught Democrats that their version of liberalism was dead and that they had to try and go to the center to where the voters actually were, as Clinton did with success. To those such as Frank and the like that was a betrayal of the liberal cause, and its clear he would have preferred Republicans continuing their dominance to Democrats compromising. (Frank worked for Sanders' 2016 primary campaign so its clear where his bias comes from.)

What Frank refers to as liberal despair is really 'progressive fatalism' and its what Harper's and all of these magazines are essentially publishing and selling to their readers. And there's something tonally off about. It's nihilistic enough to make the reader certain that everything you ever thought was real about America is either a lie or a false flag yet smug enough to somehow argue that all of these horrible things that are happening are either not your responsibility to deal with or that it's not going to affect you personally when the worst comes. Put bluntly, it's saying that America is going to become a dictatorship any day now but you'll still be safe reading about it in the comfort of your home and even though you are the exact kind of person the enemy hates and wants dead, they'll never knock on your door. All of this was always going to happen and there was never anything you could have done to stop it, except read these articles which told the world exactly what was going to happen. If we're living in a fascist state, its everyone else's fault for not subscribing to The New Republic.

As I said I'm not oblivious to everything the President did in his first term and is doing in his second. I just don't buy the fatalism that publications like this thrive in. Even if I did, then I believe it is the obligation of everyone who is worried about these things to get off their asses and do something. That's what I'm doing this year in my small way and I support all of those who are working voting drives or campaigning for Democratic officials this cycle. It's why I've spent so much time this year in particular highlighted the candidates I support. I'm not naïve enough to believe this articles, on their own, will be enough to bring about change but I sure as hell consider them more productive then just sitting in my living room, doomscrolling waiting for the end to come.

I believe, at some level, many of the writers as well as the subscribers to these magazines have basically given up on the country or the liberal order. I understand why they think this but not their collective willingness to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic if that is the case. I think their minds are in the right place but they have no desire to do the heavy lifting the way the right has clearly managed to succeed at.  The right has worked within the system in order to corrupt it to shape their vision, and we should be horrified by that. But the left basically refuses that same level of involvement, passive aggressively wanting the system to change for them while never exactly telling you into what or how. They deserve a measure of disgust for that as well.

As for me, I'm going to keep doing my part. I have another cycle on the phone banks for Peltola tonight. The work is difficult, with little reward, frequent hostility and little sign of actual accomplishment. But if we truly want America to recover from this horrible period in its history, it is incumbent on those of us who can to do so.  Sam Rayburn, one of the greatest Congressmen in America's history. famously said: "Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build one."  Publications like the ones I've discussed are where the jackasses go to bray. Having spent far too much time with them, I've decided I prefer the company of carpenters.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a barn to build.

 

#EmmysSoWhite Was BS in 2021. This Year, It's Another Hashtag as To Why Everybody Has The Wrong Priorities

 

 

I remember the first time that #EmmysSoWhite trended immediately after the 2021 Emmys. I couldn't understand it then for two very good reasons.

The first was that in the prime-time broadcast which had inspired it the Emmys had not, in fact, been all white. Michaela Coel had made his when she became the first woman of color to win an Emmy for writing a Limited Series I May Destroy You which is still considered by many critics one of the best shows of the 2020s.  Coel was in fact only the second African-American woman in the history of the Emmys to win for writing behind Lena Waithe who'd done in 2017. 

It became clear almost immediately that what caused the hashtag was the fact that no African-American actors had won an Emmy. Except that wasn't true either. In the Creative Arts Emmys earlier that month Courtney B. Vance had won Best Guest Actor in a Drama for Lovecraft Country, the second Emmy he'd ever won.

So what #EmmysSoWhite really meant was that no actors of color had won an Emmy in the primetime broadcast. In hindsight this should have told me something about how the people on social media, particularly on the left, truly see the world as a whole: if they didn't see it and it didn't meet their very particular standards, they were going to condemn it.  (It would take me the next few years to truly realize just how limited that scope was.)

It's not like I was completely unaware of the Emmys horrible history when it came to giving awards to people of color. Hell that hashtag could have applied far more easily to any Emmy broadcast from the start of the 21^st century up until 2013 and it would have been far more realistic. This was, after all, the age of the White Male Antiheroes and during the entire 2000s I could count the number of nominees of color across the board on both hands and still have fingers left over. And it was a lot easier to accuse the Emmy of racism in so many ways over that period – shutting shows like The Wire out completely, the choice to give Best Supporting Actress in a Drama not to Sandra Oh or Chandra Wilson but to their white co-nominee Katherine Heigl. Indeed the first actress of color I can recall winning an Emmy in drama during the 21^st century was Archie Panjabi in The Good Wife in 2010.  Every so often an actor of color would win Best Guest Actor or Actress in Drama or Comedy, but since that usually happened in the Creative Arts Emmy category it was easy to cast aspersions.

Primetime TV and cable were very limited in the number of prominent roles for African-Americans and other actors of color during the first decade of the 20^th century and well into the second. You'd have gotten no quibbles from me if they'd used it during that period. So the fact that the hashtag only came in 2021 was telling because for the five Emmys prior to that one it was always honoring anywhere from three to four actors of color a broadcast.  In 2020 they'd honored four of them: Regina King and Yayha Abdul-Mahteen for Watchmen, Uzo Aduba for Mrs. America and Zendaya winning her first Emmy for Euphoria. I didn't always agree with the winners over that period but I knew the significance.

So the fact that #EmmysSoWhite only started trending in 2021 seemed to mean only two things. Either the people who were handling the hashtag had only started watching the Emmys in 2015 or those online weren't counted all of the progress in the last six Emmys ceremonies, only the one where their own standards weren't met.

So this year, when #EmmysSoWhite started trending even before the broadcast was fully over I knew what this was about. Viewers were upset that no performer of color had won an Emmy in the primetime broadcast. I knew even if I were to argue that Ernest Harden Jr. had done so for The Pitt in the Creative Arts Emmys as well as the fact Hiro Murai had won for Best Directing in a Comedy (the first Asian-American to ever accomplish that, not that anyone cared) it wasn't going to placate the online mob.

There's a part of me that almost finds this hashtag adorable. At least when it trended in 2021 we were in the relatively liberal Biden Administration. Now in the midst of Trump 2.0 and all of the problems the world and Hollywood was facing, the fact that so many people were still concerned about representation at the Emmys seemed almost quaint. The fact that for the second straight broadcast the Emmys had been relatively apolitical (safe of course for Stephen Colbert's win) almost made me wonder if this was an effort to start controversy for controversy's sake because no one had taken the opportunity to speak for the people of Gaza or the One Percent or told ICE to screw itself.

The reason that this hashtag trended yet again is because it clarifies something I've always known about the way both Hollywood and the online chatter is in regard to issues. It’s not just the selective outrage or the way that they focus either on things that are irrelevant or that it's not the job of Hollywood to change. It's that they are increasing turning an awards show for television – which is so irrelevant in the grand scale of problems with America, the world or even Hollywood overall – into yet another thing that is more about checking boxes rather than something that isn't about society or issues or even the problems in Hollywood.  And on a purely basic level it gets to the lie of the whole 'representation matters' and makes it clear that it only matters about performers, full stop.

This is bad for many reasons. First of all, it makes it clear just how much BS the whole idea of 'representation matters' always was in Hollywood. It tells us that all of the people who are responsible for a show – not just writers and directors, but cinematographers, musicians, editors and all the people behind the scene – are utterly irrelevant compared to those in front of the camera.  More than a few actors have openly implied as much over the years but #EmmysSoWhite drives it home.

Put simply if Michaela Coel had won for acting in 2021 but not writing I seriously doubt #EmmysSoWhite would have trended at all even though the latter win was far more significant then her winning for acting would have been. Regina King had won in that category the previous year. And while it would have been significant had Salli Richardson-Whitfield won for Directing by the time of that award it was already irrelevant as the hashtag was trending again this year.

Second, it basically takes any remaining argument that the Emmys should be about the quality of the performance at all but rather some version of affirmative action. Now I would have been thrilled if Sterling K. Brown or Janelle James or Charles Melton had won Emmys earlier this but that was because of their excellence of their performance. #EmmysSoWhite reverse the idea: it says they deserve to win not because of the quality of their performances but the color of their skins. And if you think this sounds racist remember the hashtag has the word 'white' in it, not #EmmysNeedColor or something similar.

Related to this is how it basically reverses what the Emmys and awards shows should be about. The hashtag makes the Emmys not about honoring the best performances  but an institution that slights people of color. And if that's true then the Emmys can't even honor people like Quinta Brunson or Jessica Williams because the awards aren't about them even when they win them but makes them symbols of some great struggle. Their victories aren't about them and their defeats are symptomatic of institutional racism.  It can't reward them for their accomplishment; it can only argue their failures are part of a bigger societal system.

The final reason is the most important. The Emmys is just an awards show. No matter how much Hollywood wants to try and argue its political significance in America and the world at large it's irrelevant in the grand scheme of things or even in the smaller schemes of television. A win for Tyler James Willliams at the Emmys will not stop conservative politicians trying to roll back DEI programs; Liza Colon-Zayas' victory for The Bear did not do anything lead to immigration reform; and a victory for Niecy Nash-Betts did nothing for African-Americans, women or gays and lesbian rights in America. The best you can say these wins might do is lead to more roles for all of these minorities in Hollywood down the road. For all those who are of these minorities but have neither the means nor desire to work in the industry, it's meaningless.  Racial parity in the Emmys did nothing to help Americans during Trump's first term or Biden's term and the only people who might think it would are in Hollywood themselves, which means their perception of what is important is skewed by their status.

Now as someone who has spent the last decade studying the Emmys with a fascination where some might question might sanity, I do recognize the significance of when the Emmy makes history when it comes to minorities and will applaud it when it happens. But I've never for a moment thought that the Emmys are going to change the world when the actual awards have been dropping steadily in ratings basically my entire life.  What happens in the Emmys is cared about by a relative few and its significance basically ends within hours of the broadcast itself.  

Theoretically like all entertainment the Emmy broadcast is supposed to provide a brief respite from everyday life, not reflect society ills or be used as an instrument for social change. It's just a TV show. And considering that it's supposed to be recognizing the best performances and shows of the year, the argument that is specious.

It's not like there aren't a lot of awards show for recognizing the best among minority group – the Image Awards, Alma and GLAAD among many others, have their own recognition for identity politics in that sort  - and in some cases they actually do a better job recognized important shows and actors then the Emmys. Taken to its natural extent you almost wonder if the Emmys is supposed to have categories for Best African-American in acting, Best LatinX in acting, etc.  (As always those are the only categories #EmmysSoWhite is covering, every other award can just be one big happy melting pot.)

I have to point out that there's a similar lack of focus when it comes to gender neutral awards. No one seems to have a problem with Salli-Richardson Whitfield being nominated twice in the directing category for television or that Katie Dippold had to compete against men and women when she won for Best Writing in a Comedy. And I have heard a single non-binary writer or director complain about submitted in those categories at the Emmys. No it's only Asia Kate Dillon and Liv Hewson who seem upset about Hollywood not having a place for them, though Bella Ramsey has made it very clear they have no problem competing for Best Actress in a Drama because "I respect women." I'll bet that made them popular in their circle.

Am I making much ado about nothing? So's #EmmysSoWhite which is my point in the first place. If a shiny gold statue can't fill the broken place in the soul of a millionaire who feels guilty that they didn't become a doctor or a lawyer, how can it possibly solve the issues of systemic racism?  (By the way, whoever hosts the Emmys next year, there's a one-liner free of charge.)

Anyway now that the Emmys is over Hollywood can get back to using its platforms to do absolutely nothing to solve the problems in America or the world while in their free time producing television shows that every so often have the power to help us forget, even for a moment, how bleak the world can be. I wish they'd spend more time doing that then everything else but I know that's not the world we live in.

My sincere congratulations yet again to all of the winners this year. Don't believe the hashtag; all of you did deserve to win. (Well, maybe not Sally Field but I'm still glad she won.) Can't wait to see what you come up with this season.

And since they ignored you in their hashtag, congratulations again to Hiro Murai. You've deserved to win in this category since Atlanta. I'm thrilled at what you accomplished even if it did get in the way of a perfectly good hashtag.

 

Why Did So Many Fans Leave Lose 20 Years Ago, Part 2: In Defense of Those Who Left After Season 3

 

I was a diehard fan of Lost then and now but I'm also a critic. I don't think the first six episodes of Lost are the weakest stretch of the entire series (I actually think it’s the middle of Season 2 but I'll save that for a different article) but I'll admit with the benefit of multiple rewatches over the years I know there are legitimate problems with those episodes and it's fair to discuss the biggest issues fans had as well as some that critics might have issues with.

Let's start with the biggest canard: Nikki and Paulo. If one of the reasons you left Lost in November of 2006 was because you had issues with two characters who combined had five minutes of screen time during those six episodes (I've clocked it over the years) then you were never really a fan of Lost to begin with and you're actually worse then all those people who hated Buffy because of Riley in Season 4. I don't have much use for those people either but at least those people have the excuse that Marc Blucas was a cast member for a year and a half and was vital to the plot.

So Nikki and Paulo weren't the problem with first six episodes. Here are the real ones:

The flashbacks are now almost entirely diminishing returns. They will improve in many cases when the show resumed in February of 2007 with a few glaring exceptions but there's no question there's almost no reward with them in the first six episodes.  We've gone to the well of both Jack's father and his marriage to many times by this point ('A Tale of Two Cities') Kate's flashback really doesn't give us any pertinent about her character then or now (I Do) and the most pertinent part of Sawyer's prison flashback won't even pay off related to Sawyer. (Every Man For Himself.)  Locke's flashback in 'Further Instructions' is somewhat better but it ends on an anticlimactic note (the final scene was cut for broadcast) and while Eko's flashback in 'The Cost of Living' is a great one, it's immediately undercut by the fact he dies on the island in the present minutes later.

Only Sun and Jin's flashback in 'The Glass Ballerina' is completely rewarding from beginning to end because it tells us much more about Sun's backstory and the real damage it was doing to both of them in their marriage. What's more it's pertinent to the on-island storyline in a way none of the others are because of Sun's pregnancy and will actually have relevance later in the season.

 

There are problems with Jack, Kate and Sawyer that have nothing to do with the love triangle.

Much as I'm a fan of Lost I know that as with any show there are periods where the writers hit a wall with many of their characters. This is especially true with Lost, where many characters have arcs or even entire seasons where the writers clearly lose what inspiration they had for them in the first place. It doesn't help when the writers seem to come up with potential arcs for them during one point of the show and then abandon it either during the season or in future ones.

Jack's weakest stretch starts after the Others take Michael in Season 2. There's a potential story about training an army with Ana Lucia that never goes anywhere and he spends most of the season at war with Locke which becomes just as draining. Matthew Fox takes a lot of hate from the fanbase because of how Jack is both self-righteous and stubborn and we see him at his nadir during the second half of the season.

Sawyer's problem is that the writers, having done much to redeem his character in the first half of Season 2, decide to arbitrarily turn him into a villain when he returns to the camp. There's no reason for him to steal the guns other then the plot demands and considering that by the end of the season he basically just gives them back you can see the gears of the story grinding.

Kate's only problem is that during the second half of Season 2 she becomes less pertinent to the story to the new arrivals, first the Tailies and then Henry Gale. That's true for many characters in Season 2 and Kate honestly isn't the one who suffers the most. But just as with Matthew Fox and Josh Holloway, Evangeline Lilly's performance has diminishing returns.

In theory having a story where the three of them are at the center of the action would seem like a great way to reset all three characters. The real problem is it becomes clear as early as The Glass Ballerina that when the Others forced Michael to bring the three of them to the ferry, the only one they wanted was Jack. They took Kate for the sole purpose of keeping Jack under control and they took Sawyer to do the same to Kate. In other words (heh heh) the writers are forcing the Others to use the love triangle for their own means and that's not a good sign for any of the characters.

Even this would work better if the show was less subtle about it. But during these six episodes Jack is essentially isolated from Kate and Sawyer and doesn't know where they are. Jack has more contact with Juliet and Ben during this period then Kate and Sawyer, who are essentially delegated down the food chain. One wonders if Danny Pickett is angry all the time, not so much because its his nature but because he knows he's been relegated to the B-Plot.

And its clear the writers, having figured out this much, now have to come up something to do with one leg of the triangle. And their answer is – to put them on a chain gang with some Others breaking rocks and hauling them away for reasons that aren't explained to them and it's very likely none of the Others themselves know. They've basically given Kate and Sawyer busy work for the first six episodes and if that  isn't a metaphor for Lost as a whole at this point, I don't know what is.

So when you combine both their well below average flashbacks and the fact that the writers have no idea how to handle the characters after putting them in this situation then the reality is that none of the three actors have anything to work with and Fox, Lilly and Holloway are forced to play notes they basically didn't play for much of Season 2 and that are essentially labored.  The writers will get a handle on them when the show resumes in February though it will take a varying amount of time for all three to get there. But it's clearly a slog for the actors as much as the viewers and I get why people would be frustrated with it.

 

The Others machinations are starting to just seem ridiculous at this point.

In Back to the Island  Emily St. James says in a future Season 3 episode: "At their most opaque the Others felt not like human beings but like enemies in a video game" and she has a point. Throughout the first two seasons The Others seem to be able to come out of nowhere, have superhuman strength and wear dirty clothes and disguises, all the while saying portentous things in which its clear they view survivors of a plain crash who are foraging for food and water as the real enemy. It's clear from the teaser of Season 3 that we're finally going to see what The Others are really like…

…except in those first six episodes they're just as maddening as ever. To be clear many of the characters we meet as well as getting a glimpse of their hierarchy is rewarding (and when I get to what works about these episode I'll focus on it). The problem is after spending two seasons only appearing in the jungle just to screw with the heads of the survivors they seems to have kidnapped Jack, Kate and Sawyer…just to screw with their heads.  A viewer could ask almost bemusedly if the only reason they took them was so they'd have less of a commute. (And when you find out the answer is no, you really wonder what's going on. I'll get to that.)

It's not just the polar bear cages and the mystery with the fish biscuit. Honestly that's mild compared to some of the crap they're pulling. Taking Kate to breakfast and giving her a dress, apparently just so Ben can introduce himself to her. Keeping another Other in a polar bear cage and after he helps Sawyer escape, forcing him to apologize before taking him somewhere else. Watching Sawyer and Kate make an elaborate escape plan and give us hope, only to show that there are cameras recording every moment that somehow Kate and Sawyer have missed even though they'll be apparent in later episodes because the writers need them to be there. And don't get me started on that whole act where Ben tries to lie to Sawyer and tell him they've put a pacemaker in his chest that he'll make his heart explode. Even some of the Others can't understand why Ben puts Sawyer do this.

By the time they reveal – "we've been on a smaller island all this time!" – you're really beginning to wonder if the only reason the Others went along with harassing the Losties in the first place was because every time Ben had Game Night he put them through these things. (Hey, we've already seen them have Book Club and we'll find they have a game room later, so I'm not talking out of school.) I almost wonder if by the time we reach the winter finale Sawyer doesn't want to get out of his cage is a metaphor for where the show is right now. "If I leave the Others are going to tell me one of my sandwiches has poisoned meat in it and I have to choose with a gun to my head.)

Matthew Fox honestly does get more rewarding things, mainly because he doesn't have to deal with this nonsense. It helps matters that the writers are partnering him with Elizabeth Mitchell's Juliet or Michael Emerson in every scene he's in and considering how brilliant the two are almost immediately he at least something to sink his teeth into.  The problem comes when we finally realize why they've taken Jack in the first place:

 

Can't the Others just say 'please?"  Eventually it becomes clear why Jack was kidnapped. Ben has a cancerous tumor on his spine that is borderline inoperable and he happens to be a spinal surgeon. He'll later reveal "Two days after I learned I had a tumor on my spine; a spinal surgeon falls from the sky."

The problem is by the time Ben tells Jack this, he's already gotten trapped in a net, spent a week in the Swan pretending to be Henry Gale, had his lie uncovered, continued to manipulate everybody, got busted out, manipulated Michael into kidnapping Jack, Sawyer and Kate, took them to an entire different island and has spent the last few days manipulating all three all without telling anybody why. And as we all know Jack only finds out when he's called in by Juliet to operate on a dying Colleen and in the aftermath finds the X-rays of a 40 year old male. He figures out what's going on and Ben still deflects. (I'll get to this later because I'm dealing with the low points now.)

In 'The Cost of Living'  Ben tells Jack casually: "We had such a good plan. To break you." After not explaining (he is Ben after all) Jack asks incredulously: "You want me to save your life?" Ben answers: "I want you to want to save my life." Considering everything he's already put Jack and his friends through (and no spoiler he hasn't even gotten started yet) you can't blame Jack for being so doubtful.

In the Any Questions section for this episode Nikki Stafford, who so often spoken for the fan base, asks: "Why are they going through with this? What's with this entire game when his tumor was so severe?" It's a more then pertinent question and one that Ben never answers. Like so many other parts of Lost the writers do answer it indirectly and in such a way that many fans could miss the implication. (Because it's not relevant to these six episodes I won't state it here.)

It's just as possible the writers haven't yet figured out Ben's place in the totem pole of the island hierarchy. Its clear Ben is the leader of The Others but the writers haven't figured out what that means in the context of Lost. We definitely know by the time the final six episodes end that whatever position Ben holds he isn't exactly popular with the rank and file.

That actually leads me to the other big flaw. During this episode Juliet says she's there to show Jack a movie and shows a tape telling Jack that "Some of us want a change" basically telling him to kill Ben during his complicated surgery. The problem is even before the winter break its very clear that isn't the truth: when he knicks Ben's kidney in the OR, then punches out an Other everybody – including Juliet – is shocked by what he's done and everybody acts as if killing Ben is the worst thing possible.  Juliet will later be punished for her actions as a result of this, which makes this entire bit irrelevant to the story.

 

The writers focus so much on Hydra Island they ignore most of the regular characters.

This is actually a pattern that will hold through the first half of Season Three for many characters and never pay off for some.  Sun and Jin are the focus of The Glass Ballerina and then both essentially disappear from the action until the season is basically halfway over. Hurley gets very little to do for the first three episodes and he seems to have forgotten that Libby, his potential girlfriend, was killed by Michael even though it just happened four days ago. Sayid and Claire are similarly ignored and while Claire becomes more pertinent in the second half Sayid, who has been vital to the plot for the first two seasons is given really nothing to work with in Season 3. (Naveen Andrews would express his frustrations with the show during this period.) And Bernard and Rose, the two most important recurring characters who aren't regulars, are basically forgotten until the final two episodes of this season. (And when they both show up, most fans were sure it meant they were going to die.)

The writers will realize this problem and learn from it in future seasons but it is understandable why, in addition to spend so much time with a sagging storyline, is leaving behind characters we've grown to care about. Throw in the fact that Eko is killed, effectively killing all of the Tailies who were regulars last season and the writers did seem to be failing with their two new characters and I could understand why so many people lost patience. It's one thing not to take your time with the mysteries but to put so many characters on the backburner for it, it was frustrating as hell even for those of us who stuck with it.

 

So in conclusion I can see why so many die-hards who stuck through the show through two seasons might not have wanting to 'Go Baack!' (sorry) after I Do came to an end in November 2006.

Now having stated all that, in my next article I'll explain the reasons even this six episodes had some genuine rewards that made it worth it for some of us.

Decision 2026: Tracking the Blue Dog Democrats

 

After the Republican Revolution in 1994 in order to help maintain Democrats  who represented conservative-leaning districts (mostly in the South) a unified voice the Blue Dog Coalition was founded. The term was coined by Pete Geren a Texas Democrat who claimed that the extreme Democrats had choked the members blue.

While the party was in retreat the Blue Dog Membership would constantly grow and would be responsible for the Democrats retaking the House in 2006 when fifteen members were elected. At their height in 2008, more than one in five Democrats in the House were Blue Dog Democrats. Over the decade they adapted more socially liberal stances to stay in alignment with mainstream party voters. And starting then they were the target of the left flank because they were encourage to field primary challenges to any Democrat who didn't vote for the war in Iraq. Their work was responsible for making Affordable Care act getting narrow passage through the house, passing by only five votes. The Washington Post named them the most influential voting bloc in the House in 2009.

But because of these positions combined with the Obama-era DNC choosing to abandon the 50 state strategy of Howard Dean, they were among the biggest casualties in the 2010 midterms. Two of the delegations leaders, Stephanie Herseth Sandin and Baron Hill lost reelection and their numbers shrank to 26 combined with retirements. That number was halved to 14 in 2014.

It's worth noting that during the 2016 and 2018 elections the Blue Dog Democrats actually grew considerable, reaching a caucus of 24. 11 members defeated Republican incumbents in 2018 in districts that had gone for Trump. But the attention of America was driven to 4 far left Democrats who'd managed to win House Races.

Much of the internecine battles between the left flank and the Blue Dogs were part of the Democratic Party's attempt to try and balance the growing left with the need for white working class voters, This need became all the more critical when Biden received just 33 percent of the white-working class vote in 2020. While this was an improvement over Hilary Clinton's 28 percent in 2016, the Party knew it was in trouble

At the start of the 118^th Congress six of the fifteen members departed, so the group reorganized and began an effort to stabilize. This included a recruitment drive which prompted Mary Peltola of Alaska, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in Washington and Jared Golden of Maine to focus on ideological centrism, and pragmatic constituency-based (especially rural and working class politics). They're job was to advocate for fiscal responsibility and bipartisan consensus, opposing legislation that they thought was either too far to the right or to the left

Almost from the start their leadership led them constant attacks by AOC and other members, much in the same way left-wing Senators had focused their attacks on Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema in the Senate.

Most of them are either in swing districts or even Republican ones. Perez, Golden, and Henry Cuellar represent districts that Trump carried both in 2020 and 2024. Members such as Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Adam Gray of California's 13^th and Vincente Gonzalez of Texas 34^th are in swing districts. Particularly in the current congress the Blue Dogs have been under attack from the left more than the Republicans because of their decisions to take position their constituents would want but the far left faction doesn't. Most prominent were Perez and Golden's vote against shutting down the government and then reopening it, a decision that was a factor in Golden choosing not to run for reelection this cycle.

While so many Americans were paying attention to those primary campaigns run by the Justice Democrats and DSA candidates the Blue Dogs were engaging in a primary drive of their own. They endorsed 9 primary candidates along side all of their incumbents. In addition two former members Melissa Bean, who represented Illinois 8^th district fr0m 2005-2011 and Ben McAdams who was part of it in his one term in Utah from 2018-2020 are expected to return to Congress, though they haven't yet announced if they will rejoin their former caucus.

Here is the complete list of candidates who've won with their endorsements:

Joanna Mendoza, Arizona 6^th

Bale Dalton, Florida 7

Leela Gray, Florida 13^th

Zach Dembo, Kentucky 6

Sam Forstag, Montana 1^st

Blake Gendebien, New York 21

Jamie Ager,  North Carolina 11

Brian Poindexter, Ohio 7

Bob Brooks, Pennsylvania 7

Bobby Pulido, Texas 15

Johnny Garcia, Texas 35

Rebecca Cooke, Wisconsin 3^rd

 

With three official losses – Thein Ho and Jasmeet Bain in California and Shannon Bird in Colorado, that makes the Blue Dog Democrats track record in Democratic primaries twelve wins (fourteen if you count McAdams and Bean) and three losses. That's twice as many wins as the Justice Democrats managed in the 2026 primary cycle and six more than the DSA did. And in overall winning percentage in their primaries they have a much better track record that either group did this cycle.

Many of them are running in the same states that many Justice Democrats also ran candidates but there are far more that they didn't. The Justice Democrats didn't try to run a candidate in Florida this cycle, the Blue Dogs ran two, nor did they try to run one in Kentucky or Montana. And its worth noting Jamie Ager managed win his primary in North Carolina where as Nida Allam failed in her second attempt to win earlier this year.

Many of the candidates will be fighting it out in districts the Democrats need to win this cycle. Brooks is challenging Ryan McKenzie, who won his district by one percent in 2024. Garcia is trying to join Gonzalez and Cueller as part of that coalition after the maps were redrawn by Texas last. Cooke is trying to beat Derrick Van Orden who ran five points behind Trump in 2024.

For some their chances have improved due to events having nothing to do with them. Max Miller was a heavy favorite to win reelection until a marital scandal became so public his father in law, Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno, said he refused to support him and that he should resign. Miller has stayed in the race and now the odds have shifted heavily in Poindexter's favor. When Ryan Zinke in Montana chose not to run for reelection Sam Forstag suddenly got a boost at the district has become a toss-up. As for Blake Gendebien, Elsie Stefanik's district seemed safe until Anthony Constantino faces multiple lawsuits, most recent from the fiancé of a Republican Committee chair who he accused of being arrested for a DWI.

Unlike the overwhelming majority of the Justice Democrats and the DSA candidates all of the candidates the Blue Dogs are running face an uphill battle. Most of the ones I've listed are all running in districts that are ranked as toss-ups while many are running in races that are magenta at best and crimson at worst. For some the odds are clearly shifting – Dembo and Forstag have shown considerable momentum in the last month – but it's going to be a difficult fight for the dozen who are running.

I suspect many of them will have an advantage that the Justice Democrats don't have: both House Leadership, the DNC and all affiliates of the party have a far more vested interest in Blue Dog Democrats winning then getting more members of the Squad. As I've mentioned before the only think that group of primary winners will do is change the names of some of the members of the Democratic caucus. The Blue Dog Democrats are trying add to the numbers of it and they will have a bigger role in whether Hakeen Jeffries becomes Speaker and if he does, how big a majority he will have. It will help the Democrats more if Bob Brooks wins in Pennsylvania then when Chris Rabb inevitably does even if the left will cheer the latter and not even care about who the former is.

For the record the Blue Dog Democrats are being supported by the Progressive Democrats which is officially aligned with Bernie Sanders. With that said I suspect that the alliance is more for the Sanders' wings benefit then the Blue Dogs. Sanders's own track record of endorsing candidates is notoriously spotty. This cycle alone he endorse a left-wing candidate in the Utam 1^st against Ben McAdams' , a former and likely future Blue Dog, and McAdams's trounced his candidate easily.  What's more none of the members of the Blue Dogs are associated with the far more left-leaning Justice Democrats who have publicly reviled them since they joined Congress in 2018 despite the fact that it was not until 2024 that they officially tied the Blue Dogs with ten members apiece.

While comparisons between Blue Dogs and the Justice Democrats success in Senate races are harder to clarify it is worth noting that Abdul El-Sayid, the Democratic nominee in Michigan ran under the Justice Democrat banner in his unsuccessful run for governor in 2018. (He lost the nomination to Gretchen Whitmer.) Mary Peltola, who lost reelection in 2024 for her House seat is mounting a political comeback for the Senate in Alaska. As I've written this year most of the Democrats to win Senate nominations in swing states such as James Talarico in Texas and Josh Turek in Iowa, managed to defeat far left Democrats while the left's attempt to run Graham Platner in Maine publicly exploded this summer. All five candidates are currently favored to win their seats on Election Day far more heavily then such prominent left-wing candidates as Annie Andrews in South Carolina and DSA member Angie Nixon in Florida, though of course a lot can happen between now and election day.

The right-wing media and the current administration have spent much of the past decade trying to tar the entire Democratic Party with labels such as 'radical left' and 'socialists'. Far too often in this cycle the mainstream media has been willing to play into the narrative the right wants and that the Bernie-AOC wing considers a badge of honor. They've never had any real use for Blue Dogs, usually choosing to consider them DINOs which is laughable considering that the loudest speakers have been Democratic for far less time than most of the Democrats they criticize and quite a few aren't even actual Democrats.

The reason is one the left really doesn't want to face. At their height the Blue Dog Coalition proved that not only was it sometimes easier for the Democratic Party to win without the left's help, something it was completely unnecessary. They serve as a blatant  contradiction to the narrative the left keeps trying to push: that Americans all want the far left agenda they prefer. It contradicts the reality of the half century since McGovern's 49 state landslide defeat drove the nail in the coffin of the liberal order and that the successes Democrats have had electorally since then – the New South of the 1970s, Clinton's Third Way and the 50 state strategy of 2006 and 2008 -  came when the party went where the voters were, rather then where the left says they should be.

The left has spent far more time trying to argue these successes were failures then they have trying to convince the electorate to embrace their policies  - perhaps because deep down they know they can't do that. It's far easier to blame the system and say there's no difference between the two parties rather then try to realize your vision. In the decade since Trump first won in 2016 the left has done much to create the illusion that there's a movement for what they're selling and the Republicans are more than happy to play into because it benefits them.

The reality of the 2026 Democratic primaries is different then the narrative so many want it to be: voters are in favor of a center-left party but the emphasis is on center.  The track record of the Blue Dog Democrats cycle as well as the fact that even some progressive Democrats are willing to back them shows that this as what the voters want. If those who back the AOC's and Mamdani's have a problem with that, they need to be reminded of their place in the Democratic House Caucus. The Democrats success in the House will be owed far more to the success of candidates like Brian Pointdexter and Ben McAdams' then it ever will Ilhan Ohmar and Rashida Tlaib and they would do well to remember that because Hakeem Jeffries should and will.

 

 

Nikole Hannah-Jones Put The Good of Society Ahead of Her Daughter. She Still Doesn't Realize Who The Victim Was.

 

A little more than three years ago I began a series for medium which was one of  my first real forays into contemporary issues in 'Educating About Education'

The thesis for my article, which I believe is still very much on point, was simple:

Everybody has something to say: Democrats, Republicans, talking heads, parents, the media, people who don’t live the state, people who don’t attend the schools. Every single person who has a voice in this fight has been quoted, interviewed or made a tweet. We’ve heard from everybody in America on this subject.

Except, of course, the people who everyone claims that this is about. The children who go to these schools.  I am not surprised by this because for everything we claim to be doing for our children, in reality it is all just another one in a long line of proxy wars that every single group in the world is fighting for through someone else. 

The impetus for the series was the one that I took the longest time to get to: the battle for integration of public schools.  This led me to Ruby Bridges and while I started my article with a trigger warning of sorts I didn't hold back in my opinion:

Ruby Bridges was six years old when she became the first African-American child to attend a whites-only school in Louisiana. According to the page on Wikipedia, her parents responded to a request from the NAACP to volunteer to participate in the integration of the New Orleans school system. Her father was resistant but went along because her mother thought this was better to give her daughter a better education but to take this step forward for all African-American children.

‘Volunteered her’. We’ve seen the famous portrait by Norman Rockwell. According to Bridges, “she saw the crowd” but because she lived in New Orleans, “she thought it was Mardi Gras.” She was walked to school by marshals, who were proud of her courage. Did anybody even consider the fact that she might not have comprehended what was happening to her?

Only one person in the entire school agreed to teach Bridges. For one year, that teacher taught her along as if she were teaching a whole class.

Bridges was threatened with poison, marshals only allowed her to eat the food she brought from home. She could not participate in recess.

We commemorate Ruby Bridges as a hero. In actuality she went through an entire year of intense trauma, threats of violence and was essentially isolated from a proper educational experience in the name of progress. And there’s no indication she was asked if she wanted to do this. She was ‘volunteered’. Her parents basically put her through a year of immense torment that no doubt has to have given her immense emotional scars that probably she has had to deal with for the rest of her life. The fact that Bridges has essentially disappeared from public view not long after this happened is hardly surprising.

I remember discussing this with a friend of mine who is similar to me in his politics but blunter in his dialogue. He told me point blank that Ruby Bridges's parent were guilty of child abuse in his opinion. I didn't state that directly in my article (though I came very close to saying it outright) but I've always felt their was much truth to that:

To be clear I believe entirely in civil rights, in every aspect of integration, in every aspect of equality. I have little doubt people will read the previous paragraph and call me a bigot regardless. But look at the world we live in now. Just as it was fifty years ago, children are still at the center of wars they don’t understand as to why they are being fought.  Many of them didn’t ask to be put at the center of these wars, but their parents, then as now, considered their concerns irrelevant to the battles they are waging.  That these battles are being fought in a world that most of the combatants never set foot it should not shock us – the soldiers are never a factor to the generals or politicians.

I was reminded of all this with crystal clarity when I read an article online in the Times Magazine this weekend. The headline and the Lede tell you why:

In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?

A decade ago, I made a decision about my daughter's education that I hoped would challenge New York City's separate and unequal school system. Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice.

Perhaps it should come as little surprise that the author of this article is none other than Nikole Hannah-Jones whose 1619 Project has been condemned by major historians almost since it came out and that Hannah-Jones never backed away from. I had little reason to like Hannah-Jones as a historian or a writer; now I know for certain she is a reprehensible human being who is more interested in making a point then she is about fixing the problem.

The entire article, for the record, makes clear her narcissism in a way that is even less attractive. Even though it's clear from the opening paragraph that her own daughter believes that her mother has betrayed her for a cause she didn't know she was fighting, Hannah-Jones first instinct is to nevertheless make the story about the system and its failures.  This is not an apology to society or her own daughter but an argument in the paper of record to try and frame it so her daughter Najya is the victim of the system and not her parents. And just to be clear most of the article has less to do with Nayja's suffering or the recriminations but Hannah-Jones restating the argument about America is a racist society and still using her daughter as a proxy.

Hannah-Jones says that both she and her husband has managed to avoid segregated schools and had attended integrated ones. She acknowledges "the integrated education my husband and I received set the foundation that has allowed us to become the successful middle-class family that my daughter was born into. In other words she is a child who has bene the beneficiary of her system.

To be clear Hannah Jones compares herself – with no apparent irony – to the generations of black parents who made these decisions "based on the collective good and not just our individual advantage. Faraji (her husband) and I decided that our role in this struggle meant upending the status quo and sending our child not to a wealthy white school but a poor black one."

This is how she puts it:

We thought by sending Najya to a mostly low-income and Black school, we could help improve it for all the children there. I knew that P.T.A.s at poor schools often can raise only a few thousand dollars but Faraji and I could write checks that exceeded the annual P.T.A budget…I believed Faraji and I could bring some of that power with us. We had connections and time and status should not matter, but that we all know do. And more than that, we believed strongly that if families like ours went into schools like this one, it would challenge other families with similar values to ours."

Note the constant use of we and ours. Hannah-Jones has the arrogance of so many left-wing people – and that I see in our current President – that she, her money and time could succeed where generations had failed. This narcissism alone is bad enough before you consider that, just like those generations of black parents before her, she 'volunteered Najya to participate'. And to remind you the generations before were far poorer and has less opportunities then Hannah-Jones had and admitted she benefited from.

To be clear Hannah-Jones decided to write an essay for the Times Magazine and put her daughter on the cover. Hannah-Jones insists she wasn't planning to do this but we're only getting her version of events and I have little doubt she is no different from any other progressive who wants to speak about a cause when she's really talking about herself talking about the cause. She also points out how much personal, public response she received and how much activism she led. "In the outside world my choice had earned me valor."

At this point Nayja confronts her which is in seventh grade: "Did you know my school was bad like this when you put me here?" Hannah-Jones tries to deny but then her daughter tells her that she has looked up her school.

Hannah-Jones then says:

I told her everything I had said a hundred times on stages, in interviews, in discussions since I had made her a symbol of how the choices we make can help sustain – or dismantle – equality.

I bet a thirteen year old girl must have loved being told that her mother referred to her as 'a symbol' rather than her daughter. Her daughter had no room for this nonsense:

"So you had money to send me to one of the best schools, and you chose not to?" she said, hurling her words. "Because other kids are disadvantaged, you didn't want to put me in a great school?

If everything her mother hadn't been enough to make me feel love for Nayja Hannah-Jones that statement – said at thirteen – would have sealed the deal. In a single sentence she has dismantled the myth that her mother has built up around her, justifying everything that we've seen her do all that time. The fact that Hannah-Jones now admits that she failed "both my values and my child" is telling. Even an article that is about her child, she lists that failing her values as the first point.

The next several articles detail that as early as first grade Nayja is making it clear just how bad it is for her at school. Hannah-Jones is an active parent and witnesses much of the chaos that unfolds but continues to shift the blame to others – the faculty, the teachers., the aides. She points out that by this point all but one of the white children and the middle class children who started the school with Najya left but "we felt we could not abandon the school and our convictions at the moment we experienced the dysfunctions we knew defined so many of the segregated schools serving poor black children. We had to stay and fight for the students who did not have options."

The italics are mine because I'm pretty sure Hannah-Jones didn't retreat because she wanted to abandon neither the savior trope she'd decided she had nor the fact that the left never admits defeat even in the sight of clear failure. They put their convictions ahead of their daughter – and again, they didn't have to.

Hannah-Jones talks in great detail about how her daughter was clearly started to suffer academically and failing in both reading and multiple subjects. Rather than try to help their daughter – who should be their priority – they continue to visit the principal and get the superintendent involved. They also acknowledge they got private tutoring for Najya but made no effort to take her out of the school.

And she doesn't hide it:

Our child was suffering, but all these children were – they were languishing in classrooms with educators who did not take their academic potential seriously and largely refused to teach. What would happen to those children if we abandoned them as everyone else in power had?

Again Hannah Jones and her husband still refuse to put their own daughter ahead of 'the greater good' even though by this point it has been five years of no real results. And to be very clear there were many ways to do what she did that did not involve making her daughter a personal sacrifice: she could have withdrawn her child and continued to help from behind the scenes. In fact after she graduates the elementary school, she then doubles down and enrolls her in a middle school that is very much just as bad.

At that point Najya makes it clear she was going to prep for an exam for a prestigious high school that admits on a single entrance exam. She and her husband oppose them and as a result hadn't discussed them with her daughter. I think the only reason she agrees with this is that they'd had the confrontation in the car and there have been countless arguments between mother and daughter, which Hannah-Jones ever the writer, no doubt edited out.

By the time she reaches eighth grade Nayja is forces the decision

I explained our decision over and over but my answers never satisfied her. "But what did it do?" she'd ask. "Putting me in this school didn't change anything. I was not trying to be in this type of environment. It makes no sense."

Now I have no doubt this is the mildest version (and most printable) Najya gave her mother over the years.

I respected her growing independence…but it also unsettled me. Her adamance started to seed a fear that if I continued to force her to live my values, it could haunt our relationship far past her school years.

Again I'm pretty sure this is the mother's version of events to make herself seem the heroine and again she frames the decision to let her daughter make her own decision – but again she limits it by saying she has to choose a 'public school'

Najya, to be clear, chooses a school that is very much 'the type of public school she has spent her career arguing against'. But it's clear Najya makes it very clear that the link between race and educational opportunity is clear to her daughter.

But again Hannah-Jones makes it clear that the real agony is her own:

How could I spare myself the judgment I had meted out to others when they justified why they – despite believing in integration – sent their own children to schools that entrenched inequality?

The obvious answer is that a good parent, regardless of their race, wants what's best for their child. It's telling Hannah-Jones seems more upset that she betrayed the cause then her own daughter. This could be seen as ordinary teenage rebellion – and far more moderate and justifiable then so many – but Hannah-Jones makes it about her. Then when things get bad for her daughter culturally and academically Hannah-Jones seems almost smug at her for making the bad choice. As for her daughter's failures – very much the cause of the kind of education her mother basically forced upon her without consent – she can only manage to achieve her goals by the benefit of the privilege that comes with the wealth Hannah-Jones inherited as a benefit.

Tellingly the story ends not with Najya's graduation but Hannah-Jones bringing he daughter to talk with the principal from her own school.

And the essay ends basically still about the mother more than the daughter:

For years I had been defending my decision to Nayja, trying hard to balance empathy for her with the justification of her father's and my choices. I wanted my child to see it my way; to see the struggles she was having as part of a lineage and a mandate, to understand the tremendous privilege that I believed inoculated her against the worst consequences of the dysfunction and at times educational malpractice that she and her classmates experienced.

Najya's answer speaks volumes:

"Sometimes I wish instead of always thinking about other kids, you would have thought about me, I never really got the education I wanted."

Hannah-Jones said: "I realized what she'd been yearning for most was my acknowledgement that she had borne thee cost not only of our unjust society but also my ideals." And then to undercut it: "In this, Najya had become part of a long, unwanted tradition in Black communities."

Just to drive the point home she openly uses the story of Ruby Bridges and makes it clear yet again that, all her words and contrition to the contrary, there's still a part of her that believes she was playing a role of one of those people all those year's ago, that some day her daughter's sacrifice will be worth it. The fact that she is still willing to monetize her own daughter's suffering and neglect as a story for her own brand

My sympathy, as you might expect, is entirely for Najya Hannah-Jones who was used as a pawn by her parents in a battle she didn't ask to fight, who when she called her mother on it, her mother was more interested in defending her decision then her daughter, who is still as much a symbol to her mother than she may ever have been a child, whose mother really still seems to care more about the state of the world then her own daughter's happiness.

I see you, Najya Hannah-Jones, even though I'm not sure your mother ever truly did.  You were drafted into a battle not only without your consent, but your parents had no reason to put you through. You paid the cost for your parents convictions, and their decision to keep putting you through even in the sign of the clear pain and suffering you were feeling is as much neglect and abuse as so many of the children that do suffer from these problems but don't have the means your parents do. Your parents chose essentially to cosplay you in the world of segregated education not for your own good but for their well-being, their status, their recognition. And even now its clear your mother doesn't see the damage she's done you and still sees you only as  a mirror for her actions. They have forced you into what will no doubt  takes years of therapy to overcome – and that you are fortunate to have the funds to deal with it.

I suspect your mother's version of events is the mildest version but your independence and clarity shows that somehow you managed to come through the other side. So what I think the world needs to hear – and deserves to – is your version of events. What was the cost of being the symbol of your mother's values?

You don't have to tell this story now, or ever. But you should know that if and when you do, there will be people like me who will have your back and support you for it.  Your mother is not the victim in this story, you are. If you were to permanently cut off ties with them when you graduate from college I think countless millions could blame you.

And always remember: the system did not fail you. Your parents did. Your mother had delusions of grandeur combined with the fanaticism of a true believer and chose to make you the cause. She forgot you were a child first. And that is a crime as bad as anything you will face in America today.

And as to your mother, the question you raised was not rhetorical. And I'm pretty sure daughter knows it too.