a sharp review of the chatterton book that notes the author’s total refusal to engage with history and his insistence that a “serious” or “good faith” discussion requires participants to exist in an eternal present where individuals exist free of context www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...
The only way you're allowed to argue against my point is blindfolded, your mouth duct-taped shut, and trussed up like a calf at a rodeo.
*Whoever came up with the nickname (?) Thomas Chatterbox Williams has his number. *someone on BlueSky, I think.
It's always a sign of bad faith when people demand you engage with their beliefs inside some sort of Platonic vacuum where history didn't happen.
Damn! Where's George W.S. Trow when you need him?
I would also recommend the excellent Andrea Long Chu’s review of the book. No doubt infuriating to Chatterton, she places it in the context of other relevant things he’s said on these topics. www.vulture.com/article/post...
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Ha-ha, oh perfect, contextualizing TCW’s ostensible abhorrence of contextualizing!
I realized the other day that, after reading the dust jacket for Chatterton’s book, he’s just a Bizarro version of Jamelle Bouie
errrr, in what way?
Some elaboration: I was doing a book search for a reading challenge and when I was looking for a book set in Jersey, TCW's "memoir" in which he pats himself on the back for avoiding hip-hop culture growing up showed up in my feed.
Both black political journalists, except you became a person who was capable of empathy and independent thought and TCW became a pick-me hate golem.
maybe in the mustache sense except tcw’s is invisible?
Bouie but with a tiny little goatee
A whispy, patchy little goatee.
the sharper the better. even more so if blood is drawn in the process.
If that’s his idea—that we don’t ever answer ‘why did this thing happen’ with anything but ‘this individual did this thing and then this other individual was killed/harmed’ —we’d be unable to discuss or understand ANYTHING. And he continually violates this principle and speculates about causes.
That’s what I keep getting to with this circular logic. What is the ultimate ideal for him here? The belief that people cannot be sincere if they lump context in?
One wonders how Chatterton thinks Plate Tectonics, erosion, Evolution, etc were discovered without examining historical context...
I feel like we’ve entered a really strange place where psychotic narcissism is the guiding philosophy. My observations are the only thing that matters. Anyone else who also observes the same thing but reaches a different conclusion is irredeemably wrong. As if only one person can observe reality.
That's exactly what the narcissist thinks ("and that one person, gentlemen, is me!")
Ye olde I-don’t-see-colour-non-racist retort—invariably related to the subject of how non-racist they are
Williams has a black father and a white mother, and lives in Paris. "I contain multitudes."
So he still lives in Paris? That would account for him mistaking online life for meatspace life. He's only participating in U.S. society from two removes: being in another country and having a lifetime of the privilege of wealth.
Ignoring racism does not make it magically go away. It seems to be his hope that it will. - that such historical contingencies are imaginary things that go poof when you stop thinking about them. Reminds me of Clarence Thomas's defensiveness about affirmative action.
Chatterton is a joke. I have spent a bit of time with him and he is not a serious intellectual - he has wealthy patrons but perhaps is an apt symbol for our times - lauded by them but when you examine his arguments all flash no substance.
Oh who needs history or context! That means we’d need to read books - who wants to do that? Let’s just all revel in our ignorance and blurt out what comes to mind.
No past to learn from, no future to prepare for, just the perpetual now A place where you continue to make the same mistake over and over again, flabbergasted that by making the same choice you suffer the same outcome To many people view the world like this
“Tomorrow was created yesterday” I’ll have to read that book just for that line.
www.goodreads.com/book/show/32...
Chatterton Williams writes verbose bullshit in the same way airplanes deploy massive amounts of flares to shake off a missile lock. I have never known a writer dump so much prose onto the page without saying anything vaguely important or remotely original.
Not sure if it's because I haven't read enough of his work (I mean, *I* feel I have but I digress), but does *he* actually hold any kind of core belief in anything beyond his own importance?
This is so convenient for racists to insist on in order to deny that institutional racism exists.
This is exactly right--it's the actual "erasure of history."
So, if I understand this correctly, we shouldn't be connecting the Epstein information to tRump's past actions. That way we could just judge him based on what stupid/shitty things he's doing now (including withholding as much Epstein information as possible). Have I got that right??
These screeds are invariably one sided while claiming neutrality. That fact that Narri Weiss is a racist bigot who built her career getting Arab faculty dismissed for being Arab is blameless, a 'progressive' pointing out she is a bigot is to be castigated. Its just a book length concern troll
archive link, in case anyone wants: archive.is/LdXMn
Well he's got a good career lined up as press officer for the Fraternal Order of Police if his dogshit books and editorials keep bombing (although I suspect he'll be kept on somebody's roster)
Many right wingers call for 'defense' of western culture. Well if w. culture is responsible for positive outcomes, why can't it be responsible for the negatives? Are there no negatives, or is the culture simply not to blame? If they can't get their heads around it call them 'externalities.'
They think it can't have any negatives. In that sense it's really a religious issue. If you suggest there's something toxic in the culture you're a traitor.
Professional religious often really get it. David the harpist, beloved of the lord, grows up to be the guy who sends Uriah. the Hittite to die at the front so he gets a chance to fuck Uriah's wife. This is not an example of how religion is good for you! Maybe of how God fails to make you good.
Wow. I've heard some asinine things before but this takes the cake. Imagine if medicine or engineering or science worked this way. Context is EVERYTHING in understanding anything. Also, free speech does NOT mean people have to listen to your foolishness OR give you a platform to spread it.
Fortunately, people of character and intelligence also have memory, necessary to connect the dots of the present to the past.
Wait – this guy actually argues that we shouldn’t consider racism in any of these events? For real? 🤨
Well, depends what you mean by "real".
It's q'white the common argument in the circles of private school racists he travels with. Each injury to a brown skinned person happens in a pocket universe. The white boy with a bloody nose at 3am outside of his own neighborhood is, however, "an act of terrorism." /s
Do we have any idea what he was up to at that hour? I'm thinking buying drugs (not that there's anything wrong with that necessarily, but it's not a moment an offensive preppy wants to be offensive)
I'm also thinking buying drugs. He supposedly has a desk job somewhere with the Feds. so WTF is he doing @ 3 am on a Monday morning? Buying nose powder.
That would be my guess, he went to buy drugs, he and the sellers weren't able to come to an amicable agreement, he talked shit, he got his nose broken.
Oh he might have been subject to a "we kept your car safe" tip squeeze he could have bought off with a small bill or some basic manners. He probably tried to Billy Baddass whatever situation it was. FAFO. DC knows his face now.
I did hope somebody would come up with a not-so-bad account like that, just to be fair-minded. Nice work!
I was a white kid from the suburbs who couldn't afford a car so I walked through San Francisco and Oakland when I was going to punk shows in the 80's when the US was more violent. Amazing how well basic manners worked.
Closest I came, also no car, is 1970s, jazz in South Buffalo (McCoy Tyner!) Musically overwhelming, of course. I was ignorant too, but it was instantly clear there was nothing to worry about.
In college years ago, I walked through a dodgy neighborhood. It was clear I was a student to the locals, and some rough looking dude said “what do you say, white boy?” in a threatening manner. I replied “not much”. He laughed and I went on my way. Weird part is that he was white too! 🤔
1987, me and my brother (Aussie teen naifs) walking through the Bronx at midnight with our NY cousin. A black guy steps out in front of us, flicks out a butterfly knife and says "You wanna buy a knife?" My cousin calmly took it out his hand and replied "How much?" He got it for $5.
See? Man did you a solid by arming you.
Absolutely. I believe in being polite to people until all options are exhausted short of physically defending myself.
There's no racism if you ignore it!
Ignoring it isn't easy--you have to put in some effort
Depends on the person. It's all too easy for some
We must consider each individual child who got cancer from the superfund site at the nearby playground! To link it together with other rare cancers in the neighborhood risks conspiracy mongering!
Floyd was just a black man who had paid with a counterfeit bill...that's all the police who killed him knew. And if he had been a white man who did the same thing, would the same thing have happened? Of course not. So anything else about is extraneous to the incident.
#SameAsItEverWas The canonical conditioned reflex of a #KneeJerkLiberal is always to kick down and punch left. nymag.com/intelligence...
If we have to only live in an"eternsl present" than I don't want to hear anymore shit about Clinton or Obama!
Do you think he’s bothered to read The 1619 Project? Or just glanced at the Grok summary?
Good summary.
Everything I've ever read from this guy makes him seem like a William Buckley type right-wing smug reactionary. He writes about historical events and thinks he's intellectually superior to history because the history makes him feel bad.
"Total refusal to engage with history"? That's a preposterous misrepresentation. As for Trayvon, TCW's error there--one of the few failings of the book--is that he doesn't engage with all the relevant facts and is thus biased toward Martin rather than dispassionate. bsky.app/profile/adam...
Am I getting it right that it sounds as if, to him, every context is relevant -- except race?
In police misconduct cases, cop lawyers argue that everything right up to the second the cop killed the victim is immaterial. Then they harangue the jury about how the officer needed to make a "split second" decision Only the indivisible "now" of authoritarian violence exists.
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What a load of rot. There IS moral clarity in many things. If I take out a gun and shoot some person I don’t know (on 5th Ave., as trump fantasizes), I have done an immoral act. Not much different from the 2 moral outrages cited here.
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The hoops these RW and centrist “intellectuals” jump through to avoid any discussion about how their ilk helped usher in a fascist regime led by an incompetent criminal pedophile.
Brutal review that, most importantly, connects Williams’s dishonesty to the dishonesty of the entire project to which he’s hitched his wagon
That's how they attempt to avoid accepting any responsibility for their own actions
Denying historical context to marginalized communities is the calling card of many writers who published many essays about the dangers of "identity politics."
The good ol' "the card says 'Moops'" defense, as it were?
Right, Erase your memory and view every event as if it is unique in human history. This is how right-wing propaganda operates.
A lot of what he puts out just amounts to him not being a terribly bright person
Nope. If you read a lot of books you're automatically intelligent. It's the law.
Freedom of context in this venue is just another way of saying freedom from words and actions committed in the environment of racism
"The Road to Unfreedom" by Timothy Snider, talks about Ivan Ilyin, a Christian fascist who inspired Putin. He said great leaders condition their citizens to live in an eternal 'now' sans history, sans context, so they will tolerate their leaders doing just about anything. Even protect a pedophile.
This guy is nonsense. You can’t build anything in reality without considering the soil it’s built on, and the weather it must endure.
Sounds like I made the right choice in reading books about fey folk and druids.
Tbh I agree with the review’s headline of Williams being difficult to disagree with in the sense that the actual text of Williams’s work is often hard to disagree with because it’s so meandering and solipsistic that it’s extremely difficult to parse what he’s actually trying to argue
you have to judge each sentence individually; you can't let the past (the previous page) influence your judgement
(This is also how I feel about Bullshit Jobs, Freakanomics and most other pop-politics/economcs/philosophy type texts you mind find in an airport bookstore)
Graeber’s work does not lack context, historical or cultural. Bullshit Jobs may show up at the airport but Direct Action doesn’t.
Freakonomics is very clearly written by comparison to anything TCW does, and does a pretty good job of making a series of clear arguments that in some cases panned out and others didn’t (abortion didn’t explain changing crime and inequality, but lead largely does, for example). neither fan nor foe.
At the end of the day if you're positioning yourself as the "No Bullshit Analyst" writing those books you have to bring statistics to the table instead of just vibes - and often statistics will contradict or need to be put into context with even MORE statistics that need context too.
Lasting progress depends on our ability to separate opinion from knowledge. In times when confusion and ideology are rewarded with power, it is the responsibility of informed, capable people to unite to create environments that reward empathy. 1/2
By pooling resources, coordinating efforts, and using proven methods of communication, we can counter harmful behaviors and foster a society grounded in reason, trust, and shared well-being. A society that views all humans as family. 2/2
When is this nation going to wake up to the fact that Edmund Burke had no idea what he was talking about? What is wrong with the American education system that lets this nonsense persist in the modern age? Burke's work should be taught as an example of how ignorant we used to be.
I wish this were true!
what is the point of consuming garbage
I admire your refutation of Mr. Williams' attempts to rewrite history or, at best, to recharacterize it. But I know what he is doing. I have seen it before and I am not impressed with his efforts. So, I continue to dismiss him as a racist and likely White supremacist. But I appreciate your efforts.
Borges already writing the sequel: “Funes, his pedantry”
Thin think tank gruel. Any rat raised on this stuff is going to be anemic.
So intellectually dishonest for these people to pretend like context is irrelevant. None of us were just dropped from the sky at this moment in history.
Bingo.
Claiming that historical context can be dismissed might be the purest distillation of privilege I've come across in a while
Curse you for making me aware that I live in a world where TCW exists. Before this, ignorance was bliss. Seriously.
Viewing us all as ONLY individuals is a willful disregard of structural inequalities and oppression. We're individuals, yes, but our environment plays a huge role in who we are.
