The Rock of Chickamauga

When you have a few minutes, it's worth taking a look at Ta-Nehisi Coates's long post, "The Big Machine," which is a meditation on systems, including the fast food system and American white supremacy. As he has done a lot recently, he gets into Civil War history, and I learned something new again. This time I learned about George Henry Thomas -- the son of a Virginia slaveholder who fought on the side of the North, destroyed the Army of Tennessee in 1864, and receded in national memory while the likes of Stonewall Jackson became legendary.

As Pesto says in the comments, "Systems resist change, and one way they do that is by adapting to certain kinds of resistance." Which isn't to say that resistance is futile, but that as TNC says about white supremacy, "We should be humbled by the clear evidence that we don't really understand what we defeated, how we did it, or how its legacy haunts us today."