🚨 TIMELINE CLEANSE 🚨

It’s this elder statesman’s seventh birthday! Unclench your jaw and join me for one of the world’s most wholesome stories

In 2014, I was in my second year of grad school. I was working on campus and waiting for the elevator to go run an errand.

It gets to my floor, students come pouring out, and so does this little dog!

So I ask all of these students “Do y’all see this? Is this anyone’s dog?”

Tons of them had their headphones in and tbh I don’t think many of them even noticed that this dog just got on the elevator with them.

SOMEONE SAID IT.

https://twitter.com/thephatic/status/1348611803928997889

I’m going to need every news anchor to start asking all their image-rehabilitating GOP guests some very specific questions:

—“A number of Wednesday’s rioters likely voted Republican in previous elections. What about your party’s platform do you think appealed to them?”

—“You said this has been a long time coming. When, specifically, did you first have this realization and why is this the first time we’re hearing this from you?”

—“Was your silence worth it? Were those Supreme Court Justices worth it?”

For the past... very long time, I’ve woken up every morning wondering just how bad things would have to get for certain folks to simply say “It is racism, and it is bad.”

There’s really something to be said that photos of the confederate flag in the Capitol still aren’t enough.

You really and truly do not need to intellectualize this or make abstract “what if” slippery slope arguments.

Practice with me: “It is racism, and it is bad.”

This is not to say ~other factors~ didn’t contribute to [gestures widely] all of this.

But the extended silence about white supremacy in particular—from so many people AND EVEN STILL—is just stunning and makes me so, so unspeakably sad.