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"If you want a country whose political imagination isn’t just limited by what won’t offend white people" - I haven't heard our national reality described like this. It is the truest thing. And it's not just the white Trump supporters. It's you and me.

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I keep thinking, every time I turn over a new aspect of twentieth-first Century America that seems substandard or not-as-it-should-be, that surely this time the answer to "why does it have to be like this?" might not be, once again "because we, as a collective group of white people wouldn't allow anything better," but so far that pattern remains undefeated.

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Thank you Garrett - your post provides an incredibly helpful analogy. The study of Kamala's balancing act is instructive too. The long-form piece on Kamala in May's Atlantic article talks a bit more about that tightrope and Kamala's intent, stating Kamala "comes across as a woman who is cashing in her chips, taking all the political and social capital she was safeguarding for all those years and putting it on the table, declaring that her moment is now."

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