Hot damn, I was barely able to keep up with this woman!

What blew my mind the most in all of these essays was how McMillan Cotton is able to conceive a third position. She is not satisfied with the right’s answer, nor with the left’s answer. She wants to flip the table and opt out of their system altogether. Her “takes” (they are much weightier and sharper than a simple hot take) are ideas that I honestly haven’t read before. When we read endless iterations of the same, someone who is like, “While you keep playing your silly game together, I’m here to propose a completely new game,” is, at times, jaw dropping. No wonder she gets so much pushback—nobody likes to realize they are lying in bed with the enemy, that their lifestyle is complicit with and dependent on the opposition.

The final essay in the book is about the author’s desire to see a black woman have a single full time job as an opinion writer. The rest of her essays certainly make a case for why she would be an amazing candidate to take that role, should it ever be made available.