What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.

Any time you have, you know, upwards of 90 percent of a demographic voting against somebody, that's a statement.

If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.

I don't know how you bridge that contradiction, but I felt that Barack Obama was sincere. It didn't feel like a line to me. You know, it felt like him reverting back to what was in his bones and that's, you know, optimism and a deep belief in, you know, American institutions and the American people.

That's not an accident that Donald Trump didn't begin with, say, trade or jobs or anything, that he actually began by otherizing the first African-American president of the United States.

I want to be really, really clear about this. It doesn't mean that everyone or even the majority of people who voted for Donald Trump are racist or white supremacists or anything like that. But what it means is that it's not a mistake that Trump began his campaign with birthersism .

Lot of folks like to mock dumb history, and pretend it's just a few idiots. Isn't. It's the country.