TAKE NOTE: Ta-Nehisi Coates: Nonviolence As Compliance. “When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is ‘correct’ or ‘wise,’ any more than a forest fire can be ‘correct’ or ‘wise.’ Wisdom isn’t the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the community.”

There are a lot of people in this country who feel disrespected, and who are increasingly seeing the law as “hollow” and the current social order as “failed,” and most of them don’t live in poor black neighborhoods. What “forest fire” might result from that, and has Coates — or The Atlantic — given this any thought at all? Because some of us have.